Yvan Goby o.f.m.

One speaks a lot of Franciscan mind, but one hardly reads the writings of those that distributed it in the world.Probably, it is by the spectacle of one holy life that one knows the holiness, and not by returns; in this sense, the biographies of François saint don't miss, and the general public doesn't make himself/itself mistake to welcome them with devotion or sympathy. But the life of the saints, if she/it proposes to our imitation of the examples lived, risk also to remain a simple spectacle, especially when it is about beings as exceptional as holy François and his/her/its disciples: one has fun or one admires, one lets itself delight by poetry or the marvelous, and one doesn't pull the lesson. It is that the motive that inspires a gesture is first in the conscience of the one that produces it, and the occult that bathes an existence dedicated to God is the source of the mysterious dialogue that settles between the man and God to the deepest of the soul magnetize. As well as the faith died without the works, the works that the faith doesn't inspire are deciduous; if the one that pronounces words of the love without putting them in practice is only an impotent or a coward, the one that makes the gestures of the love without having the flame of it is only an automaton or a hypocrite. It is necessary to know the thought of the saints therefore if one wants to understand their actions fully;, it is necessary to be inspired by their mind if one wants to resemble to them.

The Evangelists were not content with describing the holy actions of God's Son: they returned the holy words that only could explain to the men his/her/its apparition and his/her/its sacrifice. There is interest therefore to meditate the writings of the saints, and it especially as the temptation would be bigger to let pass their exemplary message. However, one can succumb here to a lot of disappointments: in the domain of the spirituality, as in the other, one wrote so many insipid things! And then, even warned and documented, the society people doesn't have to dedicate to these devout readings that a very reduced time, and he is to fear that a lot of spiritual master repetitions, even of a pleasant reading, sleep lightly at the imprudent publisher who would have noticed to come them out of the oblivion. Lack of taste, of time, of orientation,: these difficulties suggest the solution of a choice among the texts, solution that is on his/her/its turn a problem. It is this problem of a florilège of the Franciscan mystics that I wanted to solve. I don't think it to have made so that all readers are satisfied; first because the choice, in such a domain, always supposes a certain arbitrariness, which explains itself by the tastes and the mental habits of the one that chooses; then because one will always invoke valid reasons to regret the presence of such text or such author.

With regard to the technique of distribution,

I was careful to respect two requirements of such a work: to practice the cuts so that the conciseness of the piece wins with the integrity of the thought; to proscribe the monotony while preventing to two successive pieces from reproducing the same theme. With regard to lessons and translations, I abstained from returning systematically to the original; for a lot of works, I trusted a translator's fame. for others, I provided an original translation, either because some didn't exist, either because I found offending the one that existed, either simply because the rights belonged some to another publisher. For the ease of reading, favorite j57;ai to give up the footnotes, satisfying me to underline the quotes scripturaires by italics.

As for the bibliography, I proscribed all learning of it and, except for exceptional cases, I reduced it to the contemporary works, that the reader will be able to obtain easily in a bookstore or a library: that one doesn't wonder therefore about to find some notes! " who don't include any bibliographic indication.Why to have made a mystical anthology, rather than an ascetic anthology, or an anecdotal anthology, or an anthology simply?

The last option supposed a too big quantity of matter; it would have succeeded to a too voluminous or too crippled work; besides it had been difficult to make better than Maurice Beaufreton - at least for what concerns the first time of the order, so rich of history, love and poetry. As for the preference for the mystic rather than for such other demonstration of the Franciscan life, she/it clearly takes out again the worry exposed higher: to give a soul to the gestures of the saints. For it, it is indispensable to adopt the texts that allow us to penetrate the most deeply in the souls, in order to seize the quivering of tenderness that enlivened them for the Christ, the blinding of joy of which they shuddered to his/her/its contact, the humility and the abandonment that opened them to his/her/its grace. So that the mystical writings don't only explain the saint's activity, but the one of God; because it is God who is the author of the holiness: the man only makes his/her/its advances in love adhere.

Only the mystical works can inform us on God's secret and patient action in the sanctified souls, only they can explain the divine radiance that emanates all their steps while making us follow step-by-step their obscurities and their discoveries, their resistances and their fidelities, their stampings and their ascension. The mystical word must be taken besides in a large sense. That one doesn't expect to find solely, in this compilation, of the narrations of ecstasies or indications to arrive to the spiritual marriage.The mystics are not only the privileged that reached the highest degree of the divine union and that possess all secrets of it, but also all those that, having understood that only this union can give a price to their life, searched for it and excited over it all. It is not therefore the degree of intimacy with God who acts me as criteria, since only God has the power to judge some, but it is the nature of the graces gotten and the desire himself to get them.

In this sense I consider that the writings that one can call mystical are of three sorts:

10) the experiences -These texts relate the mystical facts themselves, that it is the topic that makes us part or a witness privileged of his/her/its life of it. But it is however God that remains the main actor.

20) the effusions -These texts demonstrate either of the facts, but of the feelings, that upset the soul full of God or greedy of God.

30) the teachings -It is about this time either of singular events, but of laws of the mystical life; the writer didn't arrive therefore necessarily to the states of which he testifies: he/it can operate a synthesis merely on direct testimonies; however, he/it is undoubtedly that such a role supposes, at the one that fills it, otherwise an experimental knowledge, more or less developed, of the phenomena that it exposes, of the less a deep sense of the supernatural realities.

Because of his/her/its didactic pace, this kind of work is certainly less endearing than the direct relation, but it possesses the educational advantages of which this one is often deprived. The confessors of the big moniales were less saints than them, but they saw clearer in their conscience. While passing the mystical narration to the mystical explanation, one not only passes the singular to the general, but of the madness to wisdom.This compilation tempts to establish a balance between the three sorts of texts. Some authors, rather visionary (to the best sense of the term) as Marguerite of Cortone or Véronique Juliani, will only offer us the first testimony; of others, rather poets, as Jacopone of Todi or Bartholomew of Saluce, will bring us the charm of their ardent invocation; of others, rather theologians, as Harphius or Ambroise of Lombez, will propose us the help of their clear-sighted judgment. Finally, to some spiritual writers, as Angèle of Foligno or Pierre of Alcantara, I will borrow the various shapes of these mystical demonstrations. Of all, impetuous or weighted, fanciful or scholastic, we have to learn big things; that they are our intercessors to get a more luminous intelligence of it.

XIIIe-XIVe century

Saint François of foundation
PrièrePrière in time of illness
Admonition to the brothers
Action of graces Praises to God
Hymn of the Creatures
Will Saint Claire of foundation
Second letter Him Agnès of Prague
Third letter in Agnès of Prague
Bx Léon of foundation (+ 1271)
Devotion of François saint to the Christ's Passion
The Prayer that converts Bx Gilles of foundation (+ 1261)
On the Prayer Bx Jean Parenti (+ 1232)
Please the Minor brothers to Lady Poverty
Bx Thomas of Celano (+ 1260)
The please holy François Saint Antoine of Padua (+ 1231)
The love of God Saint Bonaventure (+ 1274)
The charity of François saint The love of the Sacred Heart
Meditation on the eternal Beatitude
The third way, or of the contemplation
Bx Jacopone of Todi (+ 1306)
The Dance of love OH Cristo, mio,
Diletto Jacques of Milan (2nd half of the XIIIe s.)
On the Passion of the Christ Bx Raymond Lulle (+ 13 15)

The Father of the Franciscan family appears like one the most typical cases of spiritual chiefs; not having pulled his/her/its inspiration of no master human indeed, he can be reputed rightfully as the founder of a perfectly original spirituality. When he/it unites his/its first disciples and write his/her/its first rule, he/it doesn't bring for all intellectual baggage that the rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin and the knowledge of poems in language of oc. He/it didn't read any mystic, he/it ignores the Fathers of the church; his/her/its writings only refer to the only Writing Saint, of which he/it shows the most extended knowledge. Everything that he/it let us is revealed the fruit of his/her/its interior experience and the meditation of the gospel. It is therefore indispensable to read the life of François saint if one wants to know his/her/its spirituality; because it is in her that one will not only discover the source of all writings of the Small Poor, but again of everything that there is of cleanly Franciscan in the works of his/her/its disciples. And this devotion of the disciples for a master whom was not like any tradition can explain itself that by this master's resemblance with the unique Mr..

Saint François didn't have need of books written of the hand of the men, because immediately he found the Christ in the book of the Manger and the Cross, and also in the book of the universal nature purchased in the Christ's blood and sanctified by the Christ's incarnation. Also this direct adherence has it total summer: so total that the Minor brothers, while contemplating this shattering existence, lived the gospel himself. Far from all allegorical considerations and all methods of contemplation, they found, in an existential emotion, the poor Christ in the Carceris, the Christ child in Greccio, the Christ crucified on the Averne. Saint François doesn't have therefore only given in his/her/its spiritual writings the reflection of an original thought: he/it renewed in the consciences that surrounded it the sense of the love intimacy with Jesus, and he/it has this fact generated a new spirituality, made of spontaneity, of tenderness, of humanity; this spirituality where the passion for a God of flesh returns all his/her/its significance to the Hymn of the Hymns.

Biographies: O. ENGLEBERT, Life of François saint of foundation, Pawn, 1947, 460 pages,. G. BASTIANINI, When God passes..., Life of "François saint of foundation. Franciscan editions, 1957, 292 pages, 35 photos. Biography photographic HAUSER AND VON MATT,François of foundation, Oesclée of Brouwer, 1952, 320 pages, 200 photos,. Written: Opuscules of François saint of foundation, Latin text and French translation, Franciscan Editions, 1956, 35° pages.Spiritualité,: GEMELLI, The Message of François saint of foundation to the modern world, Lethielleux, 1935, 45° pages. Synthesis: I. GOBRY,

Saint François of foundation and the Franciscan mind,
Doorstep, 1957, 192 pages, 100,
Raymond's Song The moral metaphors
Saint Marguerite of Cortone (+ 1297)
The Christ's exhortation the Christ's Promise
The prayer of Marguerite Privilège of the simplicity
Bse Angèle of Foligno (+ 1309)
the Dépouillementl'Amour of Crucified it
The certainty mystical Three sorts of prayer
The seven grants of God Hubertin of Casale (+ 1338)
Prayer to get the grace of Poverty.
Jean of Calvoli (beginning of the XIVe s.)
Action and Fioretti contemplation
Of the brother Bernard of Quintavalle Of the brother Jean of the Alvernge

XVe - XVle centuries

Saint Catherine of Bologna (+ 1463)
The conditions of the communion sacramental Henri of Herp (+ 1477)
The love unitif Bse Battista Varani (+ 1527)
The warning of the Christ Prière The time of the François test of Osuna (+ 1540)
The tears mystical Saint Pierre of Alcantara (+ 1562)
Prayer Meditation and contemplation Saint Pascal Baylon (+ 1592)
Toward Dévôts Prayer before the Jean communion of Bonilla (end X Life s.)
The abandonment to God Jean of the Angels (+ 1609)
] ésus will be liked until the end of the world

XVlle - XVllle centuries

Bartholomew of Saluce (+ 1617)
Mystical dialogue TO the wound of the Laudes side spiritual Séverin Rubéric Union to God and Benoît apostolate of Canfeld (+ 1610)
Narration of his/her/its own Joseph conversion of the Tremblay
The purity of Yves intention of Paris
I'indifférence Christian Bernardin of Paris (+ 1685)
Sense of the Condemnation Paul of Lagny (+ 1694)
Role of will in life contemplative Hyacinth of Amiens
The mystical death on the cross Honored of Cannes (+ 1694)
Conducted in the séchererse etles Chrysostome distractions of Saint-Lô The union to Jesus crucified Marie of Agréda (+ 1665)
Origin of the City Mystical" Bracati of Lauria (+ 1693)
To whom is the innate contemplation granted? Victorin Aubertin
L57;union in Christ Boniface Maes (+ 17°6)
The drunkenness spiritual Saint Véronique Giuliani (+ 1727)
First revelations The Coronation of thorns
The Condemnation Gaétan-Marie of Bergamo (+ 1753)
The suffering of Jesus Saint Leonardo of Port-Maurice (+ 1751)
Act of Bse love Marie-Crescence Hôss (+ 1744)
Hymn Sense of the suffering
Bse Marie-Madeleine Martinengo (+ 1737)
The martyrdom of the love Involvement to the Passion
The vow of the most perfect Ambroise of Lombez (+ 1778)
Prayer in the spiritual aridity The humble meditation Prayer and Eucharist Hubert Hayer (+ 1780)
How to complain to God Marie about the Nativity (+ 1798) Conduct in the spiritual aridity

The training of the prayer

XIXe-XXe centuries

Ludovic of Besse (+ 1910
The prayer of faith Eve Lavallière (+ 1929)
Letter of love to Jesus - Valentin-M Prayer. Breton (+ 1957)

Plan of spiritual life

XIIIe XIVe CENTURIES

Saint François of foundation

The Father of the Franciscan family appears like one the most typical cases of spiritual chiefs; not having pulled his/her/its inspiration of no master human indeed, he can be reputed rightfully as the founder of a perfectly original spirituality. When he/it unites his/its first disciples and write his/her/its first rule, he/it doesn't bring for all intellectual baggage that the rudiments of ecclesiastical Latin and the knowledge of poems in language of oc. He/it didn't read any mystic, he/it ignores the Fathers of the church; his/her/its writings only refer to the only Writing Saint, of which he/it shows the most extended knowledge. Everything that he/it let us is revealed the fruit of his/her/its interior experience and the meditation of the gospel. It is therefore indispensable to read the life of Françoissaint if one wants to know his/her/its spirituality; because it is in her that one will not only discover the source of all writings of the Small Poor, but again of everything that there is of cleanly Franciscan in the works of his/her/its disciples. And this devotion of the disciples for a master whom was not like any tradition can explain itself that by this master's resemblance with the unique Mr..

Saint François didn't have need of books written of the hand of the men, because immediately he found the Christ in the book of the Manger and the Cross, and also in the book of the universal nature purchased in the Christ's blood and sanctified by the Christ's incarnation. Also this direct adherence has it total summer: so total that the Minor brothers, while contemplating this shattering existence, lived the gospel himself. Far from all allegorical considerations and all methods of contemplation, they found, in an existential emotion, the poor Christ in the Carceris, the Christ child in Greccio, the Christ crucified on the Averne. Saint François doesn't have therefore only given in his/her/its spiritual writings the reflection of an original thought: he/it renewed in the consciences that surrounded it the sense of the love intimacy with Jesus, and he/it has this fact generated a new spirituality, made of spontaneity, of tenderness, of humanity; this spirituality where the passion for a God of flesh returns all his/her/itssignificance to the Hymn of the Hymns.

Biographies: O. ENGLEBERT, Life of François saint of foundation, Pawn, 1947, 460 pages,. G. BASTIANINI, When God passes..., Life of "François saint of foundation. Franciscan editions, 1957, 292 pages, 35 photos. Biography photographic HAUSER AND VON MATT,François of foundation, Oesclée of Brouwer, 1952, 320 pages, 200 photos,. Written: Opuscules of François saint of foundation, Latin text and French translation, Franciscan Editions, 1956, 35° pages.Spiritualité,: GEMELLI, The Message of François saint of foundation to the modern world, Lethielleux, 1935, 45° pages.Synthesis: I. GOBRY,Saint François of foundation and the Franciscan mind, Doorstep, 1957, 192 pages, 100,

PRAYER

LORD, please, that the burning and soft strength of your love absorbs my soul and withdraws it of everything that is under the sky: so that I die by love of your love, since you condescended to die by love of my love.

PRAYER IN TIME OF ILLNESS
I return you graces, Lord, for all these pains that I feel; I ask you, oh my Lord, to send me hundred times of it more, if it pleases you; because I would accept very gladly that you afflict me without saving me, since the achievement of your holy will is for me an overabundant consolation.

ADMONITION TO THE BROTHERS

Let's CONSIDER attentively, my brothers, that that so-called the Lord: Like your enemies, make the good to those that hate you. Because Our Lord Christ, of which we must follow the traces, called friend the one that had betrayed it and is offered itself willingly to those that crucified it. They are therefore our friends, all those that inflict us tribulations and anguishes, affronts and injuries, pains and torments, martyrdom and death unjustly; we must like them a lot, bus because of the strokes that they carry us, they get us the eternal life. Let's hate our body with his/her/its vices and his/her/its sins; while living carnally, he/it wants to remove us the love of Our Lord Christ and the eternal life, and to get lost himself with everything that there is, in the hell. Because by our mistake we are corrupted and miserable, opposed to the good, expeditious and minded to the pain; as says the Lord in the gospel: of the man's heart proceed and take bad thoughts, adulteries, fornications, homicidal, flights, greeds, injustices, ruse, impurity, bad looks, false evidence, blasphemies, pride, silliness,,. All these pains leave the bottom of the heart and it is there what soils the man. But now that we abandoned the world, we don't have anything else to make that to apply us to follow the will of the Lord and to please to him. Let's make sure well that we are not of this earth of the path, stony or covered of bramble, whose Lord speaks in the gospel,: Seed is God's speech. The one that falls very close to the path and is trodden to the feet, these are those that hear the speech and don't understand it, and immediately the devil comes and seize God's speech that has been sowed in the hearts, for fear that they believe and are saved..

Also, us the brothers, let's let, as says the Lord, the deaths to bury their deaths. Let's take care well to keep us of the mischief and Satan's subtlety, that don't want that the man holds his/her/its mind and his/her/its heart turned toward the Lord; he prowls and try to carry away the man's heart by the appeal of some reward or some advantage, to choke in his/her/its memory the speech and the precepts of the Lord; he wants to blind the man's heart by the business and the worries of the world and to establish itself/themselves of it, as well as the Lord said it: When an impure mind came out of a man, it goes by the arid and dry places, looking for rest; and while not finding, it says: Jeretournerai in my house, from where I left. And when he/it arrives, he/it finds it emptiness, cleaned and decorated. Then he/it leaves to take seven other meaner minds than him; and he/it enters there and establishes themselves of it; and this man's last state becomes worse than the first.

Let's be therefore all very heedful, so that the appeal of a reward, a work or any advantage doesn't lose us and don't divert from God our mind and our heart. In the Saint Charity that is God, I ask all my brothers, ministers and other, to separate all obstacle, to reject all worry and solicitude, and to use itself/themselves better of their in all manner, to serve, to like, to adore and to honor the Lord God, in the purity of the heart and the mind; because it is there for what he/it looks above all. Let's make to him still a temple and a home of it us, to him, the almighty Lord, Father, Son and Holy spirit. It is he that tells us: Stay up therefore and ask etout time so that you can escape everything that must arrive, and to hold you up before the man's Son. And when you will be held while praying, say: Lord Prayer who is at the heaven. Let's adore it of a pure heart, because it is necessary to pray always and without stop. Because the Father looks for such worshippers: God is mind, and those that adore it, must adore it in mind and in truth. Let's resort to him as to the pastor and to the guard of our souls. It is he that tells us: I am the good Pasteur, I graze my sheep and I give my soul for my sheep. You are all brothers, don't call anybody your father on the earth, because you only have a Father who is in the heaven. Don't be called main; you only have a Mr. that is in the heaven, the Christ. Let's hold the words, life, the doctrine and the Saint Gospel of The one that condescended to ask for us his/her/its Father and to reveal us his/her/its Name therefore: Father, I made the men that you gave to me know your Name...

ACTION OF GRACES

ALMIGHTY, very high, very holy and sovereign God, holy and just Father, Lord, King of the sky and the earth, we return you graces because of yourself, because by your holy will and by your Only son in the mind Saint, you created all things, spiritual and bodily; you got used to your picture and resemblance, you placed us in the paradise; and us, by our mistake, we fell. We return you graces because, as you created us by your Son, so by the real and holy love of which you liked us, you made be born your Son, true God and true man, of the glorious, always Virgin and very blissful Saint Marie, and by his/her/its cross, his/her/its blood and his/her/its death you wanted to purchase us of our captivity. And we return you graces because this same Son will come back in the glory of his/her/its majesty, to send the cursed, that didn't make penitence and didn't know you, to the eternal fire, and to tell all those that knew you, adored, served in the penitence: Come, bless them of my Father, receive Kingdom that has been prepared you since the origin of the world. And because, miserable and sinners that we are all, we are not worthy to name you, we pray and let's implore that Our Lord Christ, your beloved Son, some that you take pleasure, returns you graces, with the Holy spirit Paraclet, as hepleases you and as he pleases to them, for all things, him that always is sufficient to you in all and by that you made so much for us. Hallelujah.

And his/her/its glorious Mother, the very blissful Marie always Virgin; the Michel blesseds, Gabriel, Rafael, and all choirs of the blissful minds: Seraphs, Cherubs and Thrones, Dominations, Principalities and Powers, Virtues, Angels, Archangels; the John the Baptist blesseds, Jean the evangelist, Disciples, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins; the blissful Elies and Enoches; and all saints who were, will be and are: for your love we implore them humbly to return graces for all goods, as he/it pleases you, to you the sovereign, living, eternal and true God, with your very dear Son Our Lord Christ and the Saint Mind Paraclet, in the centuries of the centuries. Amen. Hallelujah.

All those that, in the holy Catholic and apostolic Church, want to serve the Lord God; all ecclesiastical orders, priests, deacons, subdeacons, partners, exorcists, readers, porters and all clerks; all religious and all nuns, all children and the small, the poor people and the paupers, the kings and the princes, the workers, the plowmen, the servants and the masters; all virgins, the widows and the wives; the laymen, men and women, children and teenagers, young and old, healthy and sick, small and big; all peoples, races, tribes, languages; finally all nations and all men, everywhere on the earth, that is and will be: humbly we pray them and let's implore, us all, Minor brothers and useless servants, to persevere together all, in the true faith and in the penitence: because otherwise no one can be saved. Let's like - us all, of all our heart, of all our soul, of all our mind, of all our power and courage, of all our intelligence, of all our strengths, of all our effort, of all our affection, of all our innards, of all our desires, of all our wills, the Lord God who gave us and give us to us all all our body, all our soul, all our life; that created us and purchased; that will save us by his/her/its only mercy; that, in spite of our weaknesses and our miseries, our corruptions and our shames, our ingratitudes and our mischief, didn't make us and makes us the good only.

Let's not have other desire, other will, other pleasure and other joy therefore that our Creator, Redeeming and Savior, the only true God, who is the very plenary, whole, total, true and sovereign; that only is good, merciful, and agreeable, sweet and soft; that only is holy, just, true and right; that only is understanding, innocent and pure; of that, by that and some that is all forgiveness, all grace and all glory, for all penitents and all just, for all blesseds who are delighted with him in the sky. Let's suppress all obstacle, all gate, therefore all screen (enters God and us). Everywhere, in all place, at all hour and in all time, every day and without discontinuing, tous,croyons of a real and humble faith, let's keep in our heart, let's like, let's honor, let's adore, let's serve, let's rent and let's bless, let's glorify and surexaltons, let's magnify and let's thank the very high and sovereign eternal God, Trinidad and Unit, Father, Son and Holy spirit, Creator of all things, Savior of all those that put in him their faith, their hope and their love; him that is without beginning and without end, unchangeable, invisible, comical, ineffable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, blessed, laudable, glorious, surexalté, sublimate, elevated, soft, agreeable, delectable and all desirable more that all things in the centuries of the centuries. & copy Translates Latin by the P. Damien Vorreux.o.f.m.

PRAISES OF GOD

& copyTu Santi Angeli Custodi 2.jpg
holy, Lord God, you only
You are strong.
You are big. You are very loud.
You are almighty king, oh holy Father, king of the sky and the earth.
You are trine and one, Lord God, all good.
You are the good, the whole well, the sovereign well, the Lord living and true God.
You are charity, love,
You are wisdom.
You are humility.
You are holy, Lord God, who makes some marvels.
You are patience.
You are insurance.
You are quietude.
You are joy and jubilation.
You are justice and temperance.
You are all wealth and our sufficiency.
You are beauty.
You are quiet.
You are our protector.
You are guardian and defender.
You are strength. You are cooling.
You are our hope.
You are our faith.
You are our big sweetness.
You are our life eternal, big and admirable Lord, God almighty, merciful Savior

HYMN OF THE CREATURES

Very High, almighty, good Lord, to you are the praises, the glory, honor and all blessing; to you only, Very High, these homages are, and hopeless man is not worthy to name you. Tied you are, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially messire brother Sun, who makes the day and by that you illuminate us; and he/it is beautiful and beaming, with big splendor; of you, Very High, he/it carries significance. Tied you, my Lord, for sister Moon and the stars, are: in the heaven you formed them, fattening pond, precious and beautiful. Tied you are, my Lord, for brother Wind and for air and the cloud, and the clear sky and all time, by which to your creatures you give the support. Tied you, my Lord, for sister Water, who is very useful, and humble, and precious and chaste, are. Tied you are, my Lord, for Late brother, by whom you illuminate the night, and he/it is beautiful, and happy, and robust and strong. Tied are you, my Lord, for our maternal sister it, that carries us and lead us, and that produces the various fruits with the colorful flowers and the grass.

Tied you are, my Lord, for those that forgive for your love, and that undergo injustice and tribulation; and blissful those that persevere in the peace, because by you, Very High, they are crowned! Tied you, my Lord, for our sister are the bodily Death, that hopeless living man cannot escape; unhappy those only that die in deadly sin; but blissful those that accomplished your very holy wills, because the second death won't be able to harm them. Rent and bless my Lord, and thank it and serve it with big humility. Translates the ombrien by Yvan Gobry

WILL

The Lord made me the thanks to me, brother François, to begin thus to make penitence. When I was in the sin, he/it was too bitter to me to see the lepers; but the Lord himself drove me among them and I practiced mercy to their consideration. And while leaving them, what had seemed bitter to me had changed itself smoothly for me for the soul and for the body. And then, I waited little and I left the world. And the Lord gave me such a faith in the churches, that I adored there thus merely it while saying: "We adore you, oh very holy Lord] ésus-Christ, in all your churches that are all over the world, and we bless it because, by your holy Cross, you purchased the world. Then, the Lord gave me so much faith in the priests who live according to the Saint's shape Church Roman, because of their Ministration, that if they persecuted me, I want to have resort to them. And when I would have as much wisdom as Salomon, if I found in the century of poor people small priests, I don't want against their will to preach in the parishes where they stay. These same priests, and all others, I want to fear them, to like them, to honor them as my Lords. And I don't want to take into account their sins because I discern in them God's Son, and that they are my Lords. And has why I act of the sort: it is that in this world I don't see anything sensitive of the same very high God Son, that his/her/its very holy Body and his/her/its very holy Blood, that they receive and than them only manage to the other. These very holy mysteries, I want to honor them and to venerate them and to place them in precious places above all. As for the very holy Names and to words of the writing, everywhere where I will find them in unbecoming places, I want to collect them and I pray that one collects them and that one places them in an appropriate place.All theologians and dispensateurs of God's very holy words, we must honor them and must venerate them as being those that communicate us the mind and Life. After the Lord had given me some brothers, no one showed me what I had to make; but the Very High himself revealed to me that I had to live in accordance with the holy Gospel. Me, I had this shape of life written, in few of words and merely, and the Lord Pope confirmed it to me. Those that came to kiss this life, everything that they could have, they gave it to the poor people; and they were content with patched inside only one tunic and outside, with a rope and leggings; and we didn't want anything to possess besides. Us, the clerks, we said the office as the other clerks; the lay brothers said the Paternoster Noster and we stayed well gladly in the churches. We were simple and subject to all. Myself, of my hands, I worked and want to work, and I want firmly that all others brothers take to a task in conformity with decorum; for those that don't know how to work, that they learn, no for the greedy desire to receive the price of their labor, but for the example and to hunt the idleness. When we won't receive the price of our work, let's resort to the table of the Lord, while asking for the alms of door-to-door. The Lord revealed me the greeting that we must use: & laquoQue the Lord gives you the Paix».

That the brothers absolutely avoid to receive churches nor, nor poor homes, nor nothing of that that one constructs for them, if it is not in conformity with the holy poverty that we promised in the Rule, making receive itself/themselves always of it as strangers and the pilgrims. I defend positively, in the name of the obedience, to all brothers, to dare to ask for some letter in Court of Rome, by themselves or per person interposed, for a church or for a few other place that it is, under pretext of predication, or because of some bodily persecution; but when they are not received somewhere, that they escape other part to make penitence there with God's blessing. And I want to obey the Minister Général of this fraternity absolutely and to the guard that he/it will please to him to give me; and I want to be if well prisoner enters his/her/its hands that I cannot go nor act beyond the obedience and his/her/its will, because he is my Lord. And although I am simple and infirm, I want to have a clerk who tells me the office yet always as he/it is written in the Rule. That all others brothers are also held. to obey their guard and to say the office according to the Rule...

And that the brothers don't say: & laquoC'est there another Rule & raquo. Because it is a memory, an admonition, my will that me, your all small brother François, I address you to you, my blessed brothers, so that this Rule that we promised to the Lord to keep, we observed it more catholiquement. That the Minister Général and all others ministers and custodes are tenus,paobéissance, not to add anything or to entrench to these paroles.que they have always with them this writing joins to the Rule, and that, in all chapters that they hold, when they read the Rule, that they also say these words, defend it positively, in the name of the obedience, to all my brothers, clerks and foreshores, to add some glosses to the Rule nor to these words, while saying: & laquo this is how they must get along." But as the Lord made me the grace to say and to write the Rule and these words merely, hear them in the same way merely and without gloss, and, with saint operation, observe them until the end. Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry

Saint Claire of foundation 1184-1253La mother of all Poor Ladies merit certainly to be considered like one biggest mystics of the posterity of François saint, her that was, during more of forty years, he/it left model of the moniales vowed to the contemplation. However, dedicated entire to the government of his/her/its sisters and to the defense of the holy Poverty, she/it hardly had the leisure to compose works of spirituality. The writings that remain us Claire saint hold in about fifty pages. These are: the Rule of the Poor Ladies (third and definitive, the only one written of its own hands), his/her/its Will, of the Letters (four in the blissful Agnès of Prague, one in Ermentrude of Bruges), his/her/its blessing in Agnès of Prague. All these texts are inspired by the purest Franciscan mind; as those of François saint, they only refer to the only Writing and aim the Christ's imitation ardently.

Sources: Saint Claire of foundation, his/her/its life, by THOMAS OF CÉLANO, his/her/its writings, translation, introduction and notes of the P. DAMIEN VORREUX.Editions Franciscaines, 1953, 168 pagesBiographie,: HENRI GHÉON, Saint Claire of foundation Franciscan Editions, 80 pages, 14 illustrations.

SECOND LETTER IN AGNÈS OF PRAGUE

In the very noble Lady Agnès, girl of the King of the kings, maid of the Lord of the Lords, wife very worthy of Christ and decorated of this fact of queen's title. Claire, maid useless and unworthy of the Poor Ladies, send his/her/its greetings and wish him to live always in perfect poverty. I return graces to the author of the grace, to The one of which comes all good and all perfection, of what he/it decorated you with so many virtues and decorated of so much perfection, to the point to make of you the Father's perfect imitator who is perfected, to dawns it even that his/her/its eyes cannot see in you anything imperfect.

This perfection, that will seal your union in the palaces of the heaven with the King himself that seat in the glory on a starry throne, consisted for you in despising the sizes of a terrestrial kingdom, to judge unworthy, in comparison, the propositions of a marriage with the emperor, to practice the very holy poverty in mind of big humility, and to put all your love to follow the traces of The one to the marriages of which you deserved to be invited. But, as I know you decorated of virtues, I don't want to bother you while overwhelming you of superfluous praises, although anything, to my eyes, is superfluous if you can pull some consolation of it. Therefore, since only one thing is necessary, I will limit myself there and you will exhort there for the love of The one to that you you are offered like a holy and pleasant host: remember your vocation and, as second one Rachel, always put back you in memory the principles of basis that make you to act; what you acquired, keep it carefully; what you make, make it well; moves back never, precipitate you on the contrary and course of a light step, without knocking you to the stones of the path, without even to raise the dust of the path, go confident, gleeful and happy; advance with precaution however on the path of happiness, don't trust anybody, don't let you to seduce by nothing of that that could divert you from the goal or to hinder your race. It is necessary that you fulfill your promises to the Very High in the very state of perfection where the mind of the Lord called you. To walk with more of security in the way of the commands of the Lord, follow the advice of our very reverend Father, the brother Elie, Minister Général, places them before all others advice that one will give to you and consider them as more precious for you that all other grant. And if someone told to you or suggests you of other initiatives contrary to our state of perfection or opposite to our divine vocation, let's not be not his/her/its advice even though they come from a placed high character; it is the poor Christ's that, poor virgin, you must remain attached.

See as he/it surrendered, for you, object of contempt, and am he while making to you, you also, by love for him, object of contempt for the world. Watch, contemplate your spouse, him most beautiful of the children of the men who became, to save you the last of the humans, despised, struck, torn with whips, dying finally on the cross in the worse pains; have other desire, illustrate queen, that to imitate it! If you suffer with him, you règneras with him; if you cry with him, you will share his/her/its joy; if you die with him in the middle of the tortures of the cross, you will be going to take possession of the celestial homes in the splendor of the saints, your name will be registered to the book of life and will become glorious among the men, you will participate forever and in the eternity to the glory of Kingdom of the heaven for abandoned asset of the terrestrial and ephemeral goods, and you will live in the centuries of the centuries. Farewell, my sister and beloved lady, adieu in the Lord your spouse; doesn't forget to recommend us to the Lord in your fervid prayers, my sisters and me that are so happy to all the although the Lord, by his/her/its grace, operates in you. Recommend us as urgently to the prayers of your sisters. Farewell!

THIRD LETTER IN AGNÈS OF PRAGUE

To his/her/its very honored Lady in the Christ and to his/her/its sister tenderly beloved. Agnès, sister of the famous king of Bohemia, but especially sister and wife of the sovereign King of the heaven. Claire, very humble and unworthy maid of the Christ and the Poor Ladies, wishes the joy of the salute in the author of salute, and everything that one can want better! The happy news that I receive concerning your spiritual blossoming and your progress full of promises in the race that you undertook to conquer the reward of the heaven, fill me of a joy in the Lord and an especially intense rejoicing that I see a marvelous complement of the very very mediocre imitation that my sisters and I try to achieve the poor and humble Christ there... You that are my beloved Lady in the Christ, the joy of the angels and the crown of your sisters, place your mind before the mirror of the eternity, let your soul bathe in the splendor of the Glory, come you of heart to The one that is the incarnation of the divine gas and, thanks to this contemplation, transform you entire to the picture of his/her/its divinity. You will manage thus to feel that that only discern his/her/its friends; you will taste the hidden sweetness that God himself has, since the beginning, reserved to those that like it. Without granting look even to all misleading seductions by which the world links the poor blinds who become attached to it, like all your to be The one therefore that, by love for you, is given itself entire, him of which the sun and the moon admire beauty, him that lavishes the rewards of which the size and the value are without boundary-marks. I want to speak of the Son of the Very High that the Virgin gives birth without stopping being virgin. Attach you to his/her/its very soft Mother who conceived and carried virginal within The one that the heaven cannot contain.

How not to divert itself/themselves with horror from the enemy of the human kind and his/her/its ruses? He/it makes our eyes sparkle yet the prestige of ephemeral glories very misleading, and endeavor, by there, to reduce to nothing what is bigger than the sky. Because a supporter's soul, that is the worthiest of all creatures, is evidently returned by the bigger God grace than the sky: this Creator that the immense heaven and all other creatures cannot contain, the soul of the only supporter becomes his/her/its stay and his/her/its home; it is sufficient for it to possess the charity. The one that is the very truth testifies to some: The one that likes me, my Father will like it; me also I will like it and we will come to him and we will make in him our home. As well as the glorious Virgin of the virgins carried it materially, in the same way you you be able to always carry it spiritually in your chaste and virginal body if you are his/her/its traces, and particularly his/her/its humility and his/her/its poverty; you will be able to contain in you The one that contains you, you and all the universe; you the possèderas of way well more real and definitive that you could not possess the perishable goods of this world. A lot of kings and queens of this world, whose pride would like to rise until the sky, as far as touching of the head the firmament, let themselves to abuse on the contrary and to seduce; they will end up well yet being reduced in rot.... And I ask you in the Lord to live to rent it, to make reasonable the homages that you return to him, and to season your sacrifice of the wisdom salt always. I wish you an as good health that me then to want it for myself. In your prayers remember you of my sisters and me. Translates of Latin by the P. Damien Vorreux

B. Léon of foundation 1271

A Franciscan scholar, the Father Ferdinand Delorme, discovered in 1922 to the library of Pérouse a manuscript title: Legenda antiqua Francisci sancti, whose critical exam permitted to affirm that it was about a writing copied on the manuscript primitive of the brother Léon. We are therefore in presence of a direct testimony, due to the most intimate mate of François saint. Léon, Him the small sheep of God I!, was indeed the confessor and the saint's secretary. He/it lived by him until the hour of his/her/its death, and it is he that was put by the agonizing Father in charge of singing a last time, with the brother Angel, the Hymn of the Creatures; only he/it attended the condemnation, only he/it received François saint an autographic blessing, to dedicated to him nominally. As was he/it considered by the first generation of the disciples as their authorized spokesman when it was necessary to recall the devout memories or to defend the forgotten ideal. When the general Crescent of esi asked to Celano, in 1244, a second Life of François saint, he asked the first brothers at the same time to provide him an unpublished documentation. The brothers Léon, Angel and Rutin (& laquo the three I mates! ) were designated for this work, but it was Léon who wrote the pooled memories. If this big and precious document didn't subsist, it has not only been used by Celano, but again by the authors of the posterior compilations, of which most famous are the Legend of the three mates and the Mirror of the Perfection. Finally, it is necessary to think that it is again the brother Léon who collected and published the Subjects of the brother Gilles.

Works: Saint François told by his first mates, French translation of her & laquo Legenda Antiqua I! by the abbot Mr. J. FAGOT, Edict. Franciscans, 1946, 206 pages. The Legend of the Three mates; French translation by abbot L. PICHARD, The craftsman of the Book, 1926, 238 pages.

DEVOTION OF SAINT FRANÇOIS TO THE CHRIST'S PASSION

The blissful François suffered during a long time, and until his/her/its death, the liver, the spleen and the stomach. Besides, during the journey that he/it made overseas to preach to the sultan of Babylon and Egypt, he/it contracted a very serious illness of eyes caused by fatigue and especially by the excessive heat that he/it had to support to go him and to the return. In spite of the prayers of his/her/its brothers and a lot of other men touched of compassion and mercy, he/it didn't worry about to take care of these illnesses, because of the ardent love that filled his/her/its soul since his/her/its conversion to the Christ. The powerful charm and the mercy that he/it felt to contemplate every day the humility demonstrated by God's Son changed smoothly for him what was bitterness for his/her/its body. The pains and the humiliations endured by the Christ for were him to us a perpetual topic of tribulation and a reason of outside and interior mortifications; as he/it had hopeless worry of his/her/its own souffrances.Un day, it was few years after his/her/its conversion, he/it followed alone the road that passes close to Saint-Marie Of The and, while walking, he/it moaned and moaned in a high voice. A spiritual man, that we know well and that returned us the fact, met it then. This man had testified to the saint a lot of goodness and had comforted it before he had only one brother, as he continued to make it thereafter besides. And he/it tells to him: "What do you therefore have, my brother? "He/it thought indeed that he/it endured some infirmity. The blessed answered: "I should browse the whole world, crying and moaning thus on the Passion of my Lord ". And this man started moaning with him and to pour abundant tears.

THAT THE PRAYERS AND PENITENCES

II also said: "Numerous are the brothers who put, day and night, all their goodwill and their care to acquire the science, abandoning their holy vocation and the religious prayer thus. And when they preached to some men or the people, and that they see or learn that some have been built or converted to the penitence, they swell himself and boast of the works and the gain of others. Because those that they believe to have built or converts to the penitence by their speeches, it is God who builds them or converts them, because of the prayers of the holy brothers that, them, don't know anything of it; God wants it thus, for fear that it is for them a topic of pride.

These brothers are my knights of the Round-table who hide in the desolate and retired places to attend more assiduously to the prayer and to the meditation, to cry their sins and those of others. Their holiness is known of God, but unknown the most often of the brothers and men. And when their souls will be presented by the angels to the Lord, he/it will show them the fruit and the reward of their pains, that means number of souls saved by their prayers. Then he/it will tell to them: "My Sons, here are the souls saved by your prayers and because you were faithful in the small things, I will establish you on big. The blissful François explained the text thus: While the sterile woman put to the world a lot of children, the one that had a lot of sons was hit of impotence. The sterile woman, he/it said, it is the good religious that, by his/her/its holy prayers and his/her/its virtues, sanctify himself and build the other. He/it often repeated this speech in his/her/its interviews with the brothers and especially to the chapter of Saint-Marie Of Her, before the ministers and the religious others. He/it formed those that were ministers or preachers to the exercise of the good works thus. He/it told to them that their load or their preacher's office had to not make them the all to abandon the holy and religious prayer; that they had to beg and had to work by hand as the other brothers for the good example and for the profit of their souls and those of others. He/it added: "The brothers who are under your obedience are built very to see their ministers and their preachers taking to willingly to the prayer, to go down and to humiliate itself/themselves. "And him, zealous supporter of the Christ, he/it accomplishes himself, so much that he/it was in health, what he/it preached to the autresTraduit of Latin by the abbot Fagot,

B. Gilles of foundation 1261

The blissful Gilles, who was one of the first mates of François saint, been part of this generation primitive of the Minor brothers, bohême, to stretch, capable to the contemplation and to the predication with an equal ease. Spiritual to the different senses of the word, the brother Gilles, that history first shows us like a shy young man, seem to have acquired with age a strong aplomb, that proved by one franc to speak famous quickly. His/her/its subjects, introverted by his/her/its mates (the brother Léon first, then the brothers Jean and Gratiens) constituted eighteen chapters annexed in the Fiorettis finally, after the Life of the Blissful Gilles herself revised according to the narration primitive of the brother Léon. of all good. The prayer illuminates the soul, and by it the soul discerns the a lot of pain. All men sinners should make this prayer continually every day, in devotion of heart, that means to ask God humbly to give them a perfect knowledge of their own misery, their sins and kindness that they received and that they receive him, the good God.

But the man who doesn't know how to pray, how could he/it know God?

All those that must be saved, if they are people who enjoy intelligence, he/it is necessary that they finally convert to the holy prayer. A brother tells the brother Gilles: "Father, he/it seems me that the man should feel a big pain and a big regret, when he cannot have the grace of the devotion in his/her/its prayer ". Brother Gilles answered to him: "My brother, I advise you to make your business all smoothly, because if you had a little good wine in one barrel where, under this good wine, there would be more binds, it is well certain that you would like neither to knock nor to agitate this barrel, not to mix the good wine and the dregs. And I tell to you as well as, so much that the prayer won't have separated of all vicious and carnal concupiscence, it won't receive a divine consolation; because it is not pure owing God, this prayer that is mixed with the dregs of the sensuality. And by continuation the man must endeavor, as much as he can it, to get rid of the whole dregs of the concupiscence, so that his/her/its prayer is pure in front of God, and so that it receives it the divine consolation & raquo.A brother tells the brother Gilles: Father, I saw the men who received in their prayer the grace of the devotion and tears, and me me then to feel no of these graces when I adore God & raquo. Brother Gilles answered to him: & laquoMon brother, I advise you to work humbly and faithfully in your prayer; because one cannot have the fruits of the earth without fatigue and without putting his/her/its work there first; and after work the wanted fruits don't occur again immediately, so much that didn't come the time and the season; and in the same way God doesn't immediately give to the man these graces in the prayer so much that didn't come the appropriate time and so much that the mind is not purified of all vicious carnal affection. Therefore, my brother, work mildly and humbly in your prayer; because God, who is all goodness and affability and that knows and discern that that there is better in every thing, will give you in his/her/its kindliness a lot of fruits of consolation, when will have come the time and the season. "

A brother interrogated the brother Gilles while telling to him: Father, what remedy do I have to take to be able to devote to me more gladly to the prayer, with more of desire and more of devotion? Because when I want to take to the prayer, I am hardened, lazy, arid and without devotion. "Brother Gilles answered him in these terms: A king has two servants; one has some weapons to be able to fight and the other doesn't have any armor; all two want to enter in the battle to fight against the king's enemies. The one that is armed enters valiantly in the battle and fight; but the another one that is disarmed told his/her/its Lord: My Lord, you see that I am naked and without weapons, but by love for you, I want to enter gladly in the battle and to fight, disarmed as me the suis». Then, the good king, seeing the love of his/her/its faithful servant, told his/her/its ministers. Go with this mine servant and don it of all these weapons that are necessary to him to be able to fight, so that he/it can enter ensécurité in the battle, and mark all weapons ofmy royal seal, so that one recognizes it for my faithful knight. "And this is how he/it often arrives to the man when he/it is going to pray, that means that he/it is without devotion, lazy and the hardened soul; but yet he/it makes effort and, for the love of the Lord, he/it enters in the battle of the prayer; and then our King and Lord, full of benignity, seeing his/her/its knight's effort, give to him, by the hands of his/her/its ministers the angels, the devotion, the devotion and the good will. & raquo Translation of to. Massero

B. Jean Parenti 1232

The Sacrum Commercium, or mystical Marriage, is an opuscule writes in 1227, therefore during the year that followed the death of François saint; it say that it is quite there about a monument primitive of the Franciscan spirituality. He/it celebrates, in the elegant style of the troubadours - heightened by the allegorical interpretation of the writing - the union contracted between François saint and Lady Poverty. He/it exercised an influence on many posterior writers, among which Hubertin of Casale. One doesn't know precisely that this work wrote. One assigned it soon to Antoine saint of Padua, soon to such or such general of the order. The most probable opinion is the one of the scholarly P. Edouard of Alençon, that estimates that the author of the Sacrum Commercium is Jean Parenti. This one, Florentine jurist, governed the order of 1227 to 1232, that means between the two généralats of Elie. He/it was a devout and ardently zealous man for the mind of saint François Bibliographie: The mystical Marriages of the blissful François of foundation with Mrs. Poverty, translation and introduction of the Father UBALD OF alençon, Bookstore Saint François, 1913, XXII80 pages.

PRAYER OF THE MINOR BROTHERS TO LADY POVERTY

We come to you, oh our Sovereign, and we implore you to receive us in the peace. We long for to become the servants of the Lord of the virtues, because he/it is the King of Glory. We heard to say that you are the Queen of the virtues, and we learned it by experience. It is why, prostrate to your feet, we implore you humbly, so that you condescend to be with us and that you are for us the way that drives to the King of Glory; you were for him this way when he/it agreed to visit, coming of in top, those that are seated in darkness and to the shade of the death. We know it, to you is the power, to you royalty; above all virtues, you are established by the king of the kings, Queen and sovereign. Only make the peace with us and we will be saved: by you will receive us the one that bought us by you. If you enact our salute, we will immediately be delivered. Because the King of the Kings, himself, the Lord of the Lords, the creator of the sky and the earth, is himself in love of your beauty and your charm. Whereas this King was in his/her/its own intimacy, rich and glorious in his/her/its Kingdom, he let his/its home and abandoned his/her/its inheritance: because the glory and the riches are in its house; but leaving his/her/its royal throne, he/it searched for you in all the burst of his/her/its dignity. Your own dignity is therefore big and your incomparable elevation since, abandoning the orders of the angels and the immensity of the virtues whose crowd filled the sky, it came to look for you in the vilest region of the earth, where you gisais, in the mud and the trash, in darkness and the shade of the death. You were an abjectness among all living; all fled you and, as much as he/it was possible to them, they escaped to you. Probably some able to completely escape you, but you were not them less odious and hateful.

But when the sovereign Dominateur had come, and had assumed you, he exalted your face among the tribes and the peoples, girt on you of one crown like his/her/its wife and raised you to a height superior to the clouds... Become thus in love with your beauty, the Son of the very high Father, uniting to you only in this world, found you faithful between all. Before his/her/its arrival from his/her/its luminous Homeland to the earth, you prepared him an appropriate place, a throne on which he/it can sit down and a bed where he/it can find rest, that means a perfectly poor Virgin... At the end, when he/it left for the sky, he/it let you the sign of Kingdom of the Heaven to mark the elected of it: so that comes to you whoever sigh after the eternal kingdom, that it is yours that he/it asks for it and by you that him there between. Because no one can enter in Kingdom if he/it is not marked of your sign. Have mercy of us therefore, oh our Lady, and mark us of the sign of your grace. Who can be enough stupid and insane enough not to like you of all his/her/its heart, you who, of all eternity, has been chosen and prepared by the Very High? Who would not honor you and you vénèrerait, when the one that adore all virtues of the heaven donned you of such a honor? Who would not adore the traces of your steps gladly, did you before whom tilt the Lord of majesty so humbly, you to whom he/it united so intimately, you to whom he/it adhered by one so burning charity? We implore of it, by Him and for Him, to you oh our Lady, don't despise our supplications in our necessities, but delivers us always in the perils, oh glorious and blessed eternally!
Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry

B. Thomas of Celano v. 1190-v.1260

Thomas of Celano, who enjoys in his/her/its homeland the cult reserved to the blesseds, received the dress of Minor brother of the hands of François saint himself, in 1215. He/it was one of those that implanted the Franciscan order in Germany. After the death and the founder's canonization, he/it was put by the Pope Grégoire IX in charge of writing his/her/its life (1228). about twenty years later, the general minister Crescent of] esi asked him for a new writing. From there the two biographies of François saint, titled Vita Prima and Vita Secunda henceforth. He/it composed the Treaty of the Miracles later (operated by François saint) and, on the order of the Pope Alexandre IV, a Life of Saint Claire (1255). He/it died at Saint's clarisses -] ean of Varro of which he/it had become the spiritual director. Poet of talent, one also must him the sequence Dies Irae.

Work: Life of Saint François (Vita excelled and Vita secunda), translation, introduction and notes of the P. DAMIEN VORREUX, Franciscan Editions, 1952, 426 pages. Saint Claire Me foundation, his/her/its life by THOMAS OF CELANO, translation, introduction and notes of the P. DAMIEN VORREUX, Franciscan Editions, 195 3, 168 pages.

THE PRAYER OF SAINT FRANÇOIS

L 'MAN of God, that his/her/its body forced to walk in pilgrim far from the Lord, endeavored to maintain at least always his/her/its mind in the sky in presence of God of which separated it the only baffle of the flesh; it was already fellow citizen of the angels. All his/her/its soul was thirsty of the Christ; to the Christ it vowed all his/her/its heart and all his/her/its body. Of the marvels of his/her/its prayer, we are going to say here some words, of the less what we saw our eyes and as far as it is possible to transmit it; that it is an example imitated by those that will come after us. All his/her/its time was dedicated to the elevation of his/her/its soul, it engraved in his/its heart the teachings of wisdom and was only afraid, it was to move back if it didn't progress anymore.

If the visits of secular or business to adjust imposed themselves to him, he/it cut the maintenances in an abrupt way rather than to wait for the outcome of it and dove again in the contemplation. The world didn't have any flavor for it that had part to the sweets of the Sky, and his/her/its taste refined by the divine gentleness could not support the coarse human joys anymore. To unite to God of all his/her/its soul and to make there participate all his/her/its body as more easily, he/it looked for the solitude. Surprised in public by one visit of the Lord, he/it made of his/its coat his/her/its cell and more of once, due to a lack of coat, hid the face behind his/her/its sleeve, not to deliver to all hidden manna. He/it always evaded one way or another the looks of the present people in order to not to unveil anything of the spouse's visit, so that, even dived to the heart of a nervous crowd, he/it prayed without being seen. Finally, when all these makeshifts proved to be impassable, it is of his/her/its heart that he/it made himself/itself a sanctuary then. Come out of himself and delighted in God, he/it stopped spitting, to moan, to sigh very strong, to deliver itself/themselves to all other outside demonstration, then. Such was his/her/its behavior among his/her/its brothers.

But when he/it prayed in forest or in a hermitage, he/it made sound the woods of his/her/its whining, watered the earth of his/her/its tears, hit itself the chest and, as hidden in the most retired room of a palace, exchanged with his/her/its Lord of interminable subjects; there he/it gave his/her/its accounts to the Judge, implored the Father, conversed with the friend, played with the spouse: it is to compose a multiple offering with all fibers of his/her/its heart that he/it wanted to contemplate thus under multiple aspects The one that is sovereignly simple and one. He/it didn't move the lips; well often his/her/its only soul spoke; it seemed to have made pass inside himself all his/her/its faculties of attention to concentrate on the celestial realities. When he/it applied thus with the whole lucidity of his/her/its intelligence and all the impetus of his/her/its heart to stay in the house of Yahweh, of his/her/its life, the only grace for that he/it asked the Lord, it was not every day more a man who prayed, it was the prayer made man. What sweetness he/it had to feel, accustomed to pray thus! Him only knows it, we can only admire. Will be able to understand that one only that will have tasted some; for the other the mystery remained whole: the mind quite scorched of ardor, the discerning look, the soul all fondue in the ecstasy, it had already become citizen of Kingdom of the heaven. He/it would never have missed by his/her/its carelessness a visit of the mind; when the opportunity presented itself of it it welcomed it faithfully and, so much that the divine favor lasted, savored the sweetness that was offered to him. So, during a work or on the way, the grace came to skim it, it tasted at intervals, but frequently, to this very soft manna; in journey, it let himself/itself outdistance by his/her/its mates to enjoy every new inspiration better. He/it never received the grace in vain.
Translates of Latin by the P. Damien Vorreux

Saint Antoine of Padua 1195-1231

Portuguese, holy Antoine was first regular Canon of Augustin saint, and passed eleven years to the Saint-Cross monastery of Coïmbre, where he acquired a strong theological science. It was the news of the martyrdom of the first Franciscan missionaries in Morocco that pushed it to don homespun, in the hope to be put to death, also him, for the Christ (12 20). After one year of contemplative life, he/it was named preacher and exercised this task in a way so stupendous that Italy and France kept to its place an inexhaustible devotion. One hardly has him that a work, the one of his/her/its Sermons, of an unequal interest and often little endearing in their style, because it is on the whole only about canvas and no of developments.

Biographies:JEAN RIGAULD (XIIIe s.), The Life of Antoine saint of Padua, translation, introduction and notes of to. MASSERON, Franciscan Editions, 1956, 160 pages. JEAN SOULAIROL, Saint Antoine of Padua, Franciscan Editions, 1956, 160 pages.Oeuvre,: The Sermons of Antoine saint for the liturgical year, translation and introduction of abbot P. BAYART, Franciscan Editions, 1944, 256 pages.

GOD'S LOVE

T u will like the Lord your God. & laquo Your God ", he/it is said. It is a reason to like it more, because we like what is ours well more that what is us foreign. Certainly, the Lord your God deserves to be liked. He/it made himself/itself your servant so that you belong to him and that you didn't blush to serve it... Thirty years, your God made himself/itself your servant because of your sins, to pull you to the servitude of the devil. You will like the Lord therefore your God. Him that made to you, he/it made himself/itself your servant because of you; he/it gave himself/itself entire to you, so that you give yourself to yourself; his/her/its second work, whereas you were unhappy, was to redo your happiness, to give itself/themselves to you to return you to yourself. You will like the Lord therefore your God of all your heart. All: you cannot keep for you any part of you. He/it wants the offering of all yourself. He/it bought you entire of all himself, to possess you him only, you entire. You will like the Lord therefore your God of all your heart. Don't go, as Ananie and Saphire, to keep for you a part of yourself; because then, as them, you would perish entire. Like therefore completely and no in part.

Because God doesn't have any parts; he is everywhere entire. He/it doesn't want a sharing in your to be, he that is entire in his/her/its being. If you reserve a part of yourself, you are to you and non point to him. Do you want all to possess? give him what you are, and he/it will give you what he/it is; you won't have anything of you anymore; but you will have all himself with all yourself.

Note these four words: heart, soul, strengths, mind. The heart is situated in the middle of the chest, a few on the left of the line that separates the breasts, toward the left breast. He/it is in the top of the trunk. He/it is not big, nor long, but of shape rather round. He/it ends in sharp enough tip. Oh man, the place and the shape of your heart teach you what manner you must like the Lord your God. The heart is situated in the middle of the chest, between the two breasts.The two breasts designate the double memory of the incarnation and the Passion; these two mysteries are as the breasts where the soul eats. The right breast means the memory of the incarnation; the left breast, the memory of the Passion. Between these two breasts your heart must stay: everything that you think, everything that occupies you, you owe all to return to poverty and the humility of the incarnation, to the bitterness of the Passion of the Lord.The wife says in the Hymn: My Beloved is for me like a bundle of myrrh, that stays between my breasts. The soul marries Christ, God's beloved Son the Father, makes itself a bundle of myrrh of the whole life of his/her/its beloved. She/it remembers how he/it was lying in the manger; enveloped of diapers; hunted in Egypt, exile, poor and pilgrim; how he/it has been harassed constantly by the injuries and the blasphemies of the Jews: how he/it has been delivered by his/its disciple, loaded of ties by the governor's soldiers, led toward Anne and toward Caïphe, linked to the column and flogged by Pumice Pilate, crowned of thorns, overwhelmed of strokes, soiled of spits, and crucified between two homicidal thieves. She/it collects all these memories; she/it unites them by the strong tie of the pain; and she/it places this bundle between his/her/its breasts, on his/her/its heart. On the wife's heart must be this bundle of myrrh always.As well as the heart is placed under the left breast, so compassion and the devotion of the heart must carry themselves on the Savior's bitter Passion. Madeleine first pours his/her/its tears and his/her/its perfume on the feet of the Lord to honor his/her/its Passion. To cry on the feet of the Lord, it sympathize to his/her/its sufferings; to anoint the feet of the Lord, it return graces for the kindness of his/her/its Passion. Because Christ's Passion imposes us this double duty: pain and devotion.As well as the heart is placed upwards of the body, so the thought and will must be held they fixed toward the glory of in-top. Where is your treasure, - and your treasure it is Christ, manna in the urn of gold, - there must be also your heart. As well as the heart is not big nor long, but of rounded shape, so take care to avoid the size of the pride, the length of the cupidity; have the plumpness, that means the perfection of life; because what is round is perfected. And as the heart ends in sharp tip, so thinks always that your life will finish in the anguish and the pain. Narrow is the death: then it will be necessary for you to clear a very contracted passage, that will stop everything that you would like to carry away, except your sins, that will serve you anything. Sharp, the death; the fear of the judgment will transfix you, the horror of the punishment will whip you. Therefore, so much that you are main of your heart, like God, your Lord, of all your cSur. And of all your soul... while turning to God's love all your movements, all your knowledge, all your life and all your strengths.The soul has three powers: the reasonable, the concupiscible and the peppery.

By the reasonable we distinguish the a lot of pain; by the concupiscible, we want the good; by the peppery, we hate the pain...

The worldly prudence seduces the reasonable power; the carnal pleasure seduced the power concupiscible; the vain glory seduces the peppery power. Such the three friends of Job, Eliphaz the Thémanite, Baldad the Suhite, and Sophar the Naamathite. Eliphaz means" "God's contempt and Thémanite means" the wind of the noon & raquo: the worldly prudence comes with the hot wind of the noon, with the cupidity of the world;... she/it despises God, and God despises it. Baldad means" the abandoned vétusté" and Suhite", the one that speaks & raquo: the carnal pleasure is as old as our first parents; it made age the skin of their successive descendants; sad heritage, that let us the old Adam; vétusté that was born of the speech of the snake... Sohar means" ruin of the tower. and Naamathite" beauty; the vain glory is born of a bad complaisance in our qualities; it destroys all the building of the contemplation and the good works: "they received their reward! ', says the gospel. Such are therefore the enemies who ruin the powers of the soul. If he/it wants to keep the peace, the blissful Job, the just penitent, far from listening to his/her/its three friends, will like the Lord his/her/its God of all his/her/its strengths. And of all your mind. The mind is this part of the soul that consists of the whole reason and all the intelligence... The mind is not the soul, but what of better has in the soul, the main part, of where proceeds intelligence. It is according to the mind that the man is God's picture. In spite of his/her/its various functions, the soul is a; it takes her/its various names according to the effects that it produces: soul, she/it enlivens the body; will, she/it orders; mind, she/it knows; reason, she/it judges; breath, she/it pushes; sense, she/it feels pleasure and pain. Therefore, like the Lord of all your mind; memory, knowledge, intelligence, turns all to God's love. Translates of Latin by abbot Paul Bayar

Saint Bonaventure 1221-1274

With Bonaventure saint a new chapître of the Franciscan history begins. The order, that confined to the anarchy under the diverging thrusts - and however, well often, the most legitimate - experienced within same, is gathered under the hand of iron of this general of thirty-six years; during seventeen years, this one is going to work to the unit by the institution of universally valid constitutions and a practice inflexible of the obedience: it is this reform that will be worth him the title of second founder of the Franciscan order. However, what the progeny of François saint wins in unit, it loses it in originality: the troop of bohemian beggars, that the only fantasy guided, go know the discipline required by the numeric growth. Il1 will be some in the same way for the spirituality: the spontaneity of the inspiration is going to make place to more of level-headedness and more of science. Mr. Bonaventure, one of the first Minor brothers (after Alexander of Hal of and Jean of the Rochelle) to be provided of an university chair, go connect the Franciscan thought to the traditional movement of the ideas, and his/her/its manner to say will be a lot more close to the one of Bernard saint or Hugues of Saint-Victor, that of the one of the brother Léon or the brother Gilles; but at the same time, the Franciscan mystic, not leaning only on the individual experience and the innate graces, but again on the theological tradition, will find in the doctrine a new sap: strength and the majesty will replace the grace and the innocence. Connected to the common trunk of this thought that feeds the church since the Apostles, the Franciscan spirituality becomes more Catholic: holy Bonaventure n is not the craftsman of the meeting of the Latin and Greeks to the Council of Lyons? Mr. in Sorbonne, ingenious craftsman in scholastic divisions, Bonaventure doesn't remain yet, in the conventional settings where he moves, dry and boring.

While he/it applies to illuminate intelligence, said of him Gerson, he/it brings back all to the piety and to the charity of the heart. It is what permitted has his/her/its contemporaries to nickname it the Doctor Séraphique, without dreading the present antinomy in these two mated terms; because if he/it is a doctor by his/her/its theological science, he/it remains seraphic by the inspiration; this one stays certainly tributary, in the primate that she/it confers to affectivity, of the traditional augustinisme; but there is not any conflict, in this harmony achieved by a Minor dialectician, between the Augustinian doctrine and the Franciscan mystic; and it is necessary to believe on the contrary that it is the fidelity to the mind of his/her/its beloved Father that dragged the brother Bonaventure in this intellectual current where the love always has the last word. Because if the spirituality bonaventurienne takes to express itself/themselves the body of the established theology, on his/her/its turn the theology bonaventurienne is inspired by the mystical lessons of François saint; so that the Christ - the alpha of the vocation to Saint-Damien and the omega of the crucifixion on the Alverne - becomes for the seraphic Doctor the centers around of which rayon the whole dogma. L ' work bonaventurienne, after have been purified of all apocryphal writings, has been published according to all critical requirements and in his/her/its integrity by the Franciscan fathers of the Saint-Bonaventure College, in Quaracchi (close to Florence), found to this effect. She/it understands ten volumes in-tolio, a part of the VIII volume being dedicated to the spiritual works. One can take for intervention point of a nomenclature of the spiritual writings the small edition of Quaracchi that understands three volumes: - Ten opuscules of mystical theology: the Triple Sees, the Soliloquy, the tree of life, the perfect Life, etc... - Three theological opuscules of which the Bréviloque and the itinerary of the soul to God. - Of the writings for the instruction of the brothers: Exhibition of the Rule, Letter on the Christ's imitation, etc...

Biography:CLOP (EUSÈBE), Saint Bonaventure, Lecoffre, 1922, 212 pages. works: (spiritual works of Bonaventure saint, introduction and notes of GOD'S P. JEAN, Bookstore Saint-François, 4 volumes. The Filler Sees, translation, introduction and notes of the P. V ALENTIN-M. Breton, Franciscan Editions, 1942, 208 pages. The six wings of the seraph, translation, introduction and notes of the P. V ALENTIN-M. Breton, 1951, 160 pages. Synthesis: Saint Bonaventure, chosen works presented by the P. V ALENTIN-M. Breton, Sapwood, 1943, 480 pages of which 112 of introduction. Saint Bonaventure 1243-1943, various studies, Franciscan Editions, 1946, 96 pages,.

THE CHARITY OF SAINT FRANÇOIS

Who will ever say love of which burned François, this friend of man? He/it appeared devoured entirely, such an ardent coal, by the flame of God's love. As soon as he/it heard to speak of the love of the Lord, he/it was seized, touched, flaming, as if the voice that resounded outside had been a bow making vibrate the chanterelle of his/her/its heart inside. It was according to him a royal lavishness that to offer such a counterpart in return for the received aumônes, and it was necessary to really be mad to prefer him his/her/its deniers, because the inappreciable currency of the divine love is the only one admitted for the purchase of Kingdom of the heaven; has why it is necessary for us to like the love of The one that liked us a lot a lot. So solicited by all things to God's love, he/it was delighted in all works come out of God's hand, and thanks to this spectacle that made his/her/its joy, he/it went back up until the one that is the reason and bracing reason of the universe. He/it knew, in a beautiful thing, to contemplate the Very Beautiful and pursued to the trace his/her/its Beloved in all place of his/her/its creation, using all the universe like a scale to make higher itself/themselves to reach The one that is all desirable.

In each of the creatures, as in as many derivations, he/it discerned with an extraordinary piety the unique spur of God's goodness, and as if the harmony pre-established by God between the properties natural of the bodies and their interactions had seemed him a celestial music, he/it exhorted all creatures, like the David prophet, to the praise of the Lord. The memory of Jesus crucified stayed constantly in his/her/its soul, and in the vehemence of his/her/its ecstatic love it wanted to be transformed entirely in this Christ crucified. One of his/her/its particular devotions was, during the forty days that follow the Epiphany, that means the time of the Christ's retirement in the desert, to search for the solitude and, hidden in his/her/its cell, to apply without interruption, while leading the possible most rigorous fasting, to pray and to rent God. He/it vowed to the Christ a love so fervid and his/her/its Beloved carried him in exchange a tenderness so familiar, that God's servant thought to have before the eyes the Savior's continual presence; himself made several times of it the confidence to his/her/its mates. The sacrament of the Body of the Lord inflamed it of love until the bottom of the heart: he/it admired, astonished, a mercy if magnetize and a love so merciful. He/it often received communion and with so much devotion as he/it communicated to the other his/her/its devotion when, all inebriate by the mind and all occupied to savor the immaculate lamb, he/it was delighted in frequent ecstasies.He/it liked an unspeakable love the Mother of the Lord Jesus, because it is her that gave us for brother the Lord of majesty, and by her we got mercy. Placing in her, after the Christ, his/her/its confidence, he/it chooses it like manager for him and his and, in his/her/its honor, he/it fasted with big devotion of the feast of the Pierre apostles and Paul until the Assumption. An undissolvable love tie attached it to the angels whose marvelous ardor throws them in ecstasy owing God and inflame the elected; by devotion for them, it led a fast of fasting and prayer during the forty days that follow the Assumption of the glorious Virgin; holy Michel especially, whose role is to introduce the souls in Paradise, was the object of a special devotion, because of the big desire that the saint had to see saved all predestined.

The memory of the saints, these stones of fire, intensified again the fires love of which it burned for God; it especially liked the Apostles, in particular Pierre and Paul, because of their the Christ's fervid love; in their honor it offered to the Lord a special fast. This poor of the Christ only possessed his/her/its body and his/her/its soul, the only donations that he/it can give in his/its love, but he/it offered them to every instant, by love of the Christ, he/it immolated his/its body continually in rigorous fastings and his/her/its soul in passionate desires, offering the holocaust thus in the outside squares and making burn the incense inside the temple.But the ardor of this love without limit that carried it toward God had for result to increase his/her/its loving tenderness also for all those that participated with it of the nature and the grace. The feelings all natural of his/her/its heart was already sufficient to make he brotherly for all creature; it is not necessary to wonder that his/her/its the Christ's love returned it more again the brother of those who carries the Creator's picture and are purchased of his/her/its blood. He/it didn't consider himself/itself like friend of the Christ that if he/it took care of the souls purchased by Him. The fire of love that devoured it made it jealous of the glorious triumph of the holy martyrs of which no one can extinguish the flame of love nor knock courage down. He/it would also have liked him, aflame of the same perfect love that banishes the fear, to offer itself/themselves to the Lord like a living host immolated by the martyrdom, in order to repay to the Christ the death that he/it undergoes for us and to provoke the men to God's love. The Christ's friend, he/it pursued for Him, of all his/her/its strengths, his/her/its research of the death, without finding it however; he/it kept the merit of a martyrdom thus, and nevertheless kept life to receive later, of this martyrdom, the seal and the symbol,: a divine fire so devouring burned his/her/its heart that it ends up marking his/her/its flesh visibly. Oh really happy you of which the flesh, without passing by a tyrant's iron, was not some for as much private of the resemblance with the immolated lamb! Oh indeed and fully happy", you of which the persecutor's sword didn't remove life, but that have not been frustrated yet of the palm of the martyrdom! Translates of Latin by the P. Damien Vorreux

THE LOVE OF THE SACRED HEARTThey pierced and

not only transfixed his/her/its hands, but his/her/its feet; with the spear of the fury they transfixed his/her/its flank and the depths of his/her/its very holy Heart already transfixed by the spear of the love. "You wounded my heart, he/it says, my Sister, my wife, you wounded my heart. Oh Jesus all in love, your wife, your Sister, your friend already wounded your Heart: was he/it necessary that him he/it was again by your enemies? If he/it is wounded, the Heart of the very soft Jesus, or rather since he/it is wounded, why bruise it of second one injury? do you note that only one injury is sufficient so that the heart dies, and that it becomes then as insensible? He/it died of his/its injury, Jesus' Heart my very soft Lord, an injury of love delighted Jesus' heart my Spouse, a death of love carried away it. How will another death enter? The love is strong as the death; in truth, it is even stronger than the death. It is not possible to expel of the house of his/her/its Heart the first death, that means the love of those that died, because he/it acquired himself/itself him by an incurable injury...

Since once we came by the Heart of the very soft Lord Jesus, and that he/it feels good so to be there, we won't part easily with The one of which he/it is written: & laquo The names of those that flee you will be written on the earth Him. What will he/it be of it therefore of those that will approach you? Let's "go to you, he/it is said; then we will exult and we will be delighted in you, while remembering your Heart ". Oh, as he/it is good and rejoicing to live in this Heart! Your Heart, oh perfect Jesus, is the good treasure, the precious pearl that we found in the field plowed of your body.

Who would therefore reject this pearl? I will rather give all my pearls, I will exchange against her all my thoughts and my affections and I will buy it, throwing all worry in the Heart of the good Jesus that will feed me without deception, to me. It is in this Temple, in this Saint of the Saints, in this Ark of alliance, that I will adore and that I will rent the Name of the Lord, while saying with David: & laquo I found a heart to ask God ". And me I found the King's Heart, my Lord, my brother and my friend, the very tender Jesus,: how would not I pray? I won't stop praying anymore. Because his/her/its Heart is mine, I say it with audacity. If the Christ is my chief, or rather because him the East, how what is my chief's would not he be mine? As well as the eyes of my bodily head are indeed mine, so the Heart of my spiritual chief is indeed mine. Yes, he/it is well mine: here it is that I only have one Heart with Jesus. What of astonishing, since the multitude of the supporters only had one heart? Having found this Heart, oh very soft Jesus, who is yours and mine, I will pray you, oh my God. Welcome my prayers in the sanctuary of your condescension, or take me rather entire in your CSur. Although the double-dealing of my sins I am an obstacle, however, since this Heart has been dilated and enlarged by your incomprehensible charity and than you, you are alone capable to purify the one that has been conceived of an impure seed, oh most beautiful of all beings, wash me better again of my iniquity and purify me of my sin, so that, purified by you, I can reach you, the perfectly Pure, and that I deserveto live every day in your Heart of my life, to see and to make your will at the same time. Your flank has been pierced to allow us to enter there. It is for it that your Heart has been wounded: so that, delivered of the outside mess, we can live in this grapevine; he/it has been wounded so that, by this visible injury, we saw the invisible injury of his/her/its love. Who likes ardently is wounded of love: how better to show this ardor that while letting the spear wound, not only the body, but also the Heart himself? The carnal injury recalls the spiritual injury, and it is what suggests, by his/her/its beautiful shape, the testimony of the writing invoked higher, which says two times: you wounded me. Sister and wife, she/it is reason of one and the other injury; it is as if the spouse overtly declared: & laquo because the goodwill of your love wounded me, I am also wounded by the soldier's spear. & raquo Who would let indeed wound his/her/its heart for his/her/its friend, if he/it had not received the injury of his/her/its love first? It is why he/it says: ((You wounded my Heart, my sister, my wife, you wounded my Heart.

But why sister and wife? Could not the only use of sister or wife be sufficient to express the tenderness of the spouse in love? And does reason marry and non woman, since the church - like all faithful soul - doesn't quit to generate every day to the Christ his/her/its Spouse the posterity of his/her/its good works? I answer in few of words. Usually, the wives are liked more ardently, when the marriage is even recent, that thereafter, when the love, with the advance of the time, lulls of himself. Our Spouse, to show that the time doesn't start the size of his/her/its love, call his/her/its friend marries, because his/her/its love is always new. But because the wives are also liked carnally, so that one doesn't hear anything carnal in our Spouse's love, he/it calls his/its wife sister, because one doesn't like his/her/its sister carnally. He/it says therefore ((You wounded my heart, my sister, my wife ", as if he/it said: & laquo because I like you fully like a wife and chastely like a sister, my Heart is wounded because of you. & raquo

Who would not like this Heart torn of such an injury? Who would not like this Heart so magnet? Who would not kiss this Heart so chaste? Certainly, she/it likes this wounded Heart, the one that exclaims, wounded by the love that she/it returns to him,: I am wounded of love. She/it answers the love of his/her/its in love Spouse, the one that tells to him,: Announce to my Beloved that I long for love Him. Us therefore that live again in the flesh, let's answer as much as we can it to our Lover's love, let's kiss our Injured whose impious wine growers pierced the hands and the feet, the flank and the CSur. And let's ask it to link a tie of love our heart up to here hard and impenitent, and to wound it of a feature of his/her/its love. Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry

MEDITATION ON THE ETERNAL BEATITUDE THE SOUL -

Oh man, do say me, do please, what must be beforehand, arrangements of the heart and intelligence to enjoy, would not this be that for a modest spiritual drunkenness, of this celestial sweetness of the contemplation? For a long time indeed, I exercised my mind to the speculation, but alas! I fear to have felt the least parcel of this celestial sweetness never well.

I read a lot: on the life of the saints and their mentality; on the nature, the action and the hierarchy of the angels; I read again enough about the unit of the ineffable Divinity, the incomparable Trinidad of the Divinity, as well as the inestimable happiness of all blesseds. But alas! after having occupied to it all my mind, I remained up to here to jeûn and starved and I always exclaimed with Augustin saint: Infinitely "good father, make me taste what I fear mentally appreciably & raquo. However, I didn't progress. Often same, tired of a prolonged, and angry application against myself, I protested with the Prophet: ] usque to what extremity, Lord, you will forget me? ] usque to when you will divert your face of me? Him - Because, although me I am judged unworthy to eat the bread of the sons, I yet waited, with an ardent desire, the minuscule crumbs that fall of their table. Alas! how many times, waiting for the open mouth, I expended much energy in vain...

THE MAN -

Oh my soul, that I can say? When I consider it, joy to come, already me défaille nearly of wonder. Because this joy will be inside and outside, above and below, and everywhere around. You will be delighted in all, you will be delighted with all. I suppose that it is your rejoicing that has been prefigured in the apocalypse by this blissful woman who has the sun for garment, the moon under the feet, and on the head a crown of twelve stars. I imagine that this woman is the blissful soul, queen, girl and wife of the eternal King: girl by the creation according to the nature, wife by the adoption according to the grace, queen by the consecration of the glory. One says well that she/it is donned of the sun since she/it is decorated with the resplendence of the divine and crowned light of the dignity of the eternal happiness. It is in this happiness that one finds, because of their particular splendor, the twelve joys, prefigured by the twelve stars, that make the pleasure and the ornament of the supreme beatitude. These joys, oh my soul, you must browse them every day in mind with devotion, in looking for no consolation to your present misery and to your exile, but while calculating patiently and gladly, in their hope, the tribulations of the present life...

(As holy Bernard tells it to you)

"Court therefore, oh my soul, not with the feet of the body, but with your affections and your desires; because it is not only the angels and the blesseds who wait for you, but also the Lord and Mr. of the angels and blesseds. God the Father waits for you as his/her/its very beloved daughter, God the Son as his/her/its to stretch wife, God the Holy spirit as his/her/its all gracious friend. God the Father waits for you to constitute you heiress of all goods, God the Son to offer you the fruit of his/her/its nativité and the price of his/her/its precious blood, God the Holy spirit to return you participant of his/her/its eternal goodness and his/her/its eternal sweetness. She/it waits for you, the blissful family of the eternal King, made of all celestial minds, to receive you in his/her/its assembly. "

You therefore, want their society above all. You would come there with a big apprehension, if you had not liked it in this valley of tears... I estimate indeed, oh my soul, that if you always kept inside these celestial joys, you would make this exile like a suburb of the celestial kingdom, where by advance you would taste spiritually, every day, this eternal sweetness... God's Kingdom, very dear soul, is inside of us, and we disregard it miserably, alas! when we spill to the outside among the vain and useless things...Oh Lord God, if the war contains a peril so serious, how much don't think you that there will be joy in the triumph? ... Will rise two seraphs then, that means the two choirs of the elected, the one of the innocents and the one of the penitents, himself crying one to the other: - Saint, holy, holy, the Lord, the God of the armies, - Saint God the Father, who freed us the world, the flesh and the devil so mightily. - Saint God the Son, who justified us so wisely of the pain and the sin, - Saint God the Holy spirit, that, of the eternal torments, preserved us so benignly. - The earth is full of the glory of The one that called us of the misery of the world to the joys of the celestial Kingdom.

Oh my soul, what day for you that the one where you will be raised until this blissful choir, and where everything that you supported with piety in this world you will become an eternal jubilation. Then, of all it you will rent the Lord your God with the lips of the exultation, in these terms: I will sing the mercies of the Lord eternally...

You therefore, when the temptations will feel you, when the persecutions will invest you, when the various tribulations of this century will attack you, fly you then spiritually to the sky, and think that it is not something else that an instrument of the eternal joy...

Oh! that he/it is glorious, this Kingdom where reigns with the Christ all saints that, donned of white dresses, come with the lamb everywhere where he/it goes. Oh my soul, how will one lack happiness where one will have so many opportunities to be delighted? See close to you the assembly of all saints that the divine clemency united to put the height to your happiness... If the number of the elected is not expressible, who would therefore be sufficient to tell the joy of the blesseds? "What day will be this for you, writing holy Jérôme, when Marie, the Mother of the Lord, will come to your meeting, accompanied by the choirs of the virgins, and when your Spouse himself will advance with all saints to tell you: Raise you my all beautiful, come, precipitate you, my beloved, my dove, already the winter passed, rain left from it and ran away... Then the hundred forty four one thousand that are held before the throne and the old men will take their zithers and will sing a new hymn. Then, full of insurance, you will fly in your Spouse's arms, while saying joyously: I found the love of my soul, I hold it and he/it won't leave me Him. Then the seven sons of this big Job that are big among all those that live in this blissful region of the orient will make of the bouquets each on his/her/its turn and will invite their sister, you, their companion...Oh extraordinary glory! oh happy and happy elevation, of which one didn't hear to speak ever in this world! I estimate that the whole magnificence of the earth is hardly a droplet in comparison of this splendor...

Oh greedy and famished soul, if you had only received in the mouth of your heart, in this banquet, a crumb that falls of the dominical table, I think that you would know how to support patiently, from this day, the present journey and all tribulation; if you had tasted only one drop of wine that one drinks there, you would have in disgust, the whole sweetness of this world... Oh my soul, think about the glory that will be she yours, when you will be donned of this new and luminous dress, decorated with all sorts of precious stones, that wants to say your glorious body, in which will sparkle as many precious gems as the mind possesses virtues. Who could tell the marvelous joy, the ineffable praise that you will receive, in return for this victory taken back so valiantly on your body with the shield of the chastity and the continence, of this triumph gotten so mightily on the world while fleeing it and while despising it, of this flight of the devil provoked so carefully by the fight of the firmness; of this sustained resistance so courageously with all thoughts and all your affections against all movements messed up of your conscience...

Then you will be flooded of delights in the vision marvelous of the divine light; you will be hit of admiration in the delicious vision of yourself; you will be dilated by the perfect spectacle of all creatures. Oh shattering and marvelous contemplation! Oh delicious and delectable vision! Oh spectacle rejoicing and ineffable! Oh how much he/it is said exactly of you, Lord my God: Only one day in your palace is better than one thousand days, bus one thousand years owing your eyes are as the day that has just finished... The AME - OH man, now I long in the love for to see the Lord God my creator, me défaille in the ardor to contemplate Jesus my brother and my redeemer; now I moan, wounded of the desire to see the Virgin Mother; now; the vision of all creature I become heavy, because the beauty of The one of which they left surpasses them incomparably... The MAN - OH my soul, if your burning desire to contemplate the eternal Light appears long and big to you, what desire would you have to burn to like the eternal goodness perfectly and to possess the supreme majesty eternally? ...

Oh human heart, indigent heart, heart felt by the pain, heart crushed under the pain, as you would be in joy if all these goods you were given in abundance! Interrogate you, to the deepest of your conscience,: in such a beatitude, can she/it contain one so big joy? ... Definitely, the eye didn't see, the ear didn't hear, the man's heart didn't feel this love and this knowledge that are those of God's saints. I implore of it to you, oh my God: that I know you, that I like you, that I was delighted eternally with you. And if me the then fully in this life, that the less grow this knowledge and this love, so that up there joy is full, that the hope of changes here below up there actually itself. Lord Father, by your Son you counsel us, you order us to ask and you promise us to receive, so that our joy is full. I ask you, Lord, for that that, by your admirable to counsel, you counsel to ask and you promise to receive, so that our joy is full. While waiting for this joy, that my mind meditated it, that my language speaks to of it, that my heart likes it, that my mouth makes his/her/its interviews, that my soul is hungry of it of it, that my flesh is thirsty of it, until the day where I will enter in my God's joy, that, triple and unique, is blessed in the centuries. So either he/it Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry

THE THIRD WAY, OR OF THE CONTEMPLATION

THE REST OF THE PEACE

The degrees that drive to the Rest of the peace are the seven below enumerated:

THE MODESTY
first meet in the recordation of the sin and according to the four aspects of this one, to know,: his/her/its magnitude, his/her/its multitude, his/her/its turpitude, his/her/its ingratitude.

THE FRIGHT
in second place, in the waiting anxious of the judgment, and according to four aspects, to know,: the disturbance of the activity, the blindness of the reason, the obduracy of will, the final condemnation.

THE PAIN
in third place, in the appreciation of the damage and according to four aspects, to know,: the loss of the divine friendship, the deprivation of the innocence, the lesion of the nature, the dissipation of the past life.

THE CLAMOR
in fourth place, in the quadruple entreaty of the aid,: of God-Father, the Christ Sauveur, the Virgin-Mother, the triumphant church.

THE RIGOR
in fifth place, in the extinction of the home of the concupiscence and under his/her/its four aspects, to know,: of aridity that is indévotion, of perversity that is mischief, of pleasure that is lust, of vanity that is pride.

THE ARDOR
in sixth place, in the desire of the martyrdom, and for four motives, to know,: the perfection of the remission of the offense, the perfection of the purification of the spot, the perfection of the satisfaction of the pain, the perfection of the sanctification in grace.

SLEEPINESS,
finally, in seventh stage, to the Christ's shade. There, is the stop and rest. There, the man feels covered by the shade of the divine wings, so that he doesn't burn anymore nor of the ardor of the desire, nor of the fear of the punishment. However one cannot reach until there that by the thirst of the martyrdom, nor to this thirst that by the extinction of lust, nor to this one that by the implored suffrage, nor to this suffrage that by the deplored damage, nor to this regret that by the fear of the judgment, nor to this fear, without having remembered and humiliated of his/her/its mistakes. That the one therefore that wants to enjoy the rest of the PEACE, advance according to the order that is assigned him.

THE SPLENDOR OF THE VERlTE

SEVEN are also the degrees by which, in the way of the Christ's imitation, one reaches the splendor of the truth, and these are: 1. the assent of the reason, 2. the feeling of compassion, 3. the look of the admiration, 4. the ardor of the devotion, 5. the revêtissement of the resemblance, 6. the embrassement of the Cross, 7. the blinding of the Truth. in which you will advance according to this order:

CONSIDER:

1. - That is the one that SUFFERS and submit you to Him by the assent of your reason: Believe firmly that the Christ is indeed: God's Son, the Principle of all things, the Savior of the men, the Rétributeur of the merits of all.

2. 2. - What is the one that suffers, and unite you to Him by a feeling of COMPASSION: sympathizing: to the very Innocent, to the very soft, to the very noble, to the very magnet.

3. - How much BIG the one that suffers; take you toward him by the look and the admiration: attentive to see it immense: in power, in beauty, in happiness, in eternity. Admire therefore: this power ruined, this discolored beauty, this tortured happiness, this expired eternity.

4. 4. - For what REASON endures the one that suffers: forget you for Him by an excess of devotion because he/it suffers: for your redemption, for your illumination, for your sanctification, for your glorification.

5. 5. - In what SHAPE he/it suffers, and don you of the Christ by the effort of the imitation. He/it suffered: very gladly in relation to the neighbor, very severely in relation to you, very obediently in relation to God, very carefully in relation to the adversary. Endeavor therefore to don you: of benignity towards the neighbor, of severity towards yourself, of humility towards God, of distrust towards the demon. according to the picture that in you must carry the Christ.

6. 6. - Of what WEIGHT are the sufferings of the one that suffer; and kiss the Cross in the desire of Compassion, so that, as endured the all power, impotent in his/her/its ties, goodness, debased in the outrages, wisdom, ridiculous under the mockeries, the justice, convinced of iniquity by the torment, yourself you devote yourself to the passion of the Cross, full passion,: of injustice in the things, of outrages in words, of indignity in the gestures, of torments in the torments.

7. 7. - The CONSEQUENCES finally of what he/it endures; and capture the splendor of the truth by the eye of your contemplation. Because, because the lamb suffered, here it is that the VII Seals of the Book are broken.

However this book is the universal knowledge of the things, in which seven notions remained veiled to the man, who has been revealed him, to know, by the efficiency of the Christ's Passion: Admirable God, the intelligible mind, the sensitive World the desirable Paradise, the horrible hell, the laudable Virtue, the attributable Sin.

By the Cross is demonstrated indeed:

1. - GOD,
worthy of admiration in his/her/its supreme and incrustable wisdom, in his/her/its supreme and incorruptible justice, in his/her/its supreme and comical mercy, Because: his/her/its high wisdom disappointed the demon, his/her/its high justice required the price of the ransom, his/her/its high mercy delivered for us his/her/its Son; these attributes, worthily considered, demonstrate us admirable God.

2. - The mind
capable to know: in size of benignity in the Angels, in size of dignity in the Men, in size of malignancy in the demons. Because the Angels permitted that their Lord was crucified, the men are estimated to this price that for them God's Son was crucified, but to the suggestion of the demons.

3. - The WORLD
, slave of the senses, because he/it is a place where reigns: the blindness, since he/it didn't know the true and supreme light, the barrenness, since he/it despised Christ as barren, the iniquity, since he/it condemned and put to death his/her/its God and in love and innocent Lord.

4. - THE PARADISE
forever DESIRABLE, since in him see themselves: the top of all glory, the spreading of all rejoicing, the heap of all wealthiness; because God, to restore us this dwelling, made himself/itself vile, destitute and poor man: and there of intelligibility, according to his/her/its triple species, the height accepted abjectness, the justice undergoes the condemnation, the wealthiness assumed the indigence: The very high Emperor accepted the abject servitude indeed, so that we were sublimated in glory: the very just sudden Judge the sternest condemnation so that we were justified of all coulpe; the very opulent Lord assumed the extreme poverty so that we were enriched of his/her/its abundance.

5. - THE HELL
t HORRIBLE oujours being a place filled of indigence, baseness, ignominy, calamity and all misery. If it was necessary that the Christ suffered to raise the man of the sin and there to satisfy, how much he will be more strongly necessary that the damned undergo all these pains for the just payment of their debt and his/her/its compensation!

6. - The VIRTUE
truly LAUDABLE, to know according to his/her/its price, according to his/her/its burst, according to his/her/its fruit,: according to his/her/its price, because the Christ gave his life rather than to contradict to the virtue; according to his/her/its burst, because he was resplendent at the very middle of the outrages; according to his/her/its fruit, because only one exercise perfects the virtue despoiled the hell, reopened the sky, restored the earth.

7. - The SIN
individually ATTRIBUTABLE and how much awful, since to his/her/its ransom is required: a price so heavy, an atonement so big, a remedy so bitter; so much and so much that it was necessary that to satisfy there, devoted himself God United in unit of no one to the noblest man, by the most abject lowering, because of the arrogance, because no one is more superb; by the more stripped poverty, because of the cupidity, because no one is greedier; by the most biting acerbity, because of lasciviousness, because no one is more dissolute. Has therefore how all things in the Cross appear; all things indeed at Seven cut down. From where the cross is the key, the door, the way and the splendor of the truth. The one that takes it and follows it of the assigned manner here, don't walk in darkness, but he/it will have the Light of life.

XIIIe XIVe CENTURIES THE SWEETNESS OF THE CHARITY

The degrees of access to the sweetness of charity by the conception of the mind-Saint are the next one: the anxious vigilance, the reinforcing confidence, the flaming desire, the raising ardor, the increasing complaisance, the delectable jubilation, the uniting adherence; and in this order you must browse them, you that want to reach by the to perfection charity and to the love of the mind Saint. He/it is indeed necessary:1 - that the vigilance worries because of the celerity of the spouse's arrival so that you can make yours the Psalmist's words: God, my God, since the morning I stay up and expect, and these other of the Hymn: I sleep and my heart stays up, and these of the Prophet: My soul wanted you in the night and my mind in my innards since the morning stayed up for you.

2. - that the confidence comforts you because of the Certainty of the spouse's arrival; so that you can say: In you, Lord, I hoped, I will never be confounded, and with Job: Whereas he/it would kill me, I would hope again in Him.

3. - that the desire inflames you, because of the spouse's Sweetness, so that you repeat with the Psalm: As the deer wants the water of the fountains, so my soul sighs toward you, oh God, or with the Hymn: Strong as the death is the love, or: I languish of love...

4. - that the ardor raises you because of the spouse's Sublimity, and that you say: That they are liked your tabernacles, powerful God, and with the wife: drag me, I will run, or with Job: The death I am to desire.

5. - that complaisance pacifies you, because of the spouse's Beauty, so that you can say: My Beloved is me and mine to him, my Beloved is white and vermilion, as well as makes the wife.
6. - that the rejoicing delights you because of the spouse's Fullness, so that you retell: According to the multitude of my pains in my heart, my soul was delighted in the abundance of the consolations, or: How much big is the multitude of your sweets oh God, and with the apostle: I abound with joy...
7. - that the adherence you conglutin to Him, because of the Strength of the spouse's love,: so that you can say: The good for me is to adhere to God or: Who will separate us of God's charity? Between these degrees the order is such, that one doesn't have a stop before the last and that one doesn't reach this one that by the intermediate degrees, so mutually disposed: To the first degree exercises itself the reflection, in the next one dominates the affection. The vigilance considers legitimate, useful and delectable indeed how much is to like God. Generated from there, the confidence generates, on his/her/its turn the desire; and this one the ardor, until the soul reaches to the union, to the kiss and to the embrace; where condescends to drive us The one that lives and reign to the century of the centuries. Amen.

RECAPS TION Briefly these stages can sum up thus:

I. - distinguishes seven steps first for the purification:
I - because of your déportements, blush;
2 - because of the judgment, quiver;
3 - because of the punishment, moan;
4 - because of your recovery, implore a subsidy; reason of the adversary, choke your passions; reason of the crown, long for the martyrdom;
7 - and to shelter you, approach you of the Christ.

2. - Distinguishes seven steps then toward illumination: Consider:

I - That is the one that suffers: that the faith captivates you;
2 - what is the one that suffers: that compassion you contriste;
3 - what size in The one that suffers: that the admiration stuns you;
4 - for what reason, and confident, return grace.
5 - in what shape, and am he to resemble to him;
6 - of what sufferings without measure: scorch you to kiss it;
7 - and what you must conclude some: understand and contemplate.

3. - Distinguishes seven steps finally toward the way unitive:

I - That the vigilance makes you attentive to the spouse's fast passage;
2 - that the confidence makes you strong because of the certainty of his/her/its arrival
3 - that the desire scorches you because of the sweetness of the Beloved. ,
4 - that the devotion raises you until his/her/its sublimity;
5 - that complaisance pacifies you in his/her/its beauty;
6 - that the jubilation intoxicates you on the fullness of his/her/its love;
7 - that the attachment you conglutin by the power of this love; so that still the religious soul, in his/her/its heart says to His/her/its Lord: "I look for you, I wait for you, I want you, I stretch myself toward you, I seize you, in you I exult, to you I adhere, finally as to my Good.
Translates of Latin by the P. Valentin Breton

B. Jacopone of Todi 1230-1306

He/it is especially known to have written the Stabat Mater. But the rest of his/her/its poetic work, as his/her/its personality, home ignored of the general public. Son of a big bourgeois ombrien, he/it was going to study to the university of Bologna, from where he/it took Ph.D. in law, and used his/her/its science to pursue money and honors. Become rich and influential, he/it thought about getting married and married, to thirty-seven years, a count's girl. Following L57;année, the young woman, object of his/her/its highest devotion, died. Jacopone put to profit his/her/its pain to bend on the nothing of his/her/its worldly life. He/it distributed his/its goods, adhered to the Third Order, and lived while begging, object of the popular jokings. At the end of six years of this life, he/it got his/its admission at the Minor brothers (1278). After sixteen past years in the silence of the hermitages, Jacopone committed the mistake to go to Rome, where he was mingled to the struggles between cardinals of various gone and Minor of various observances. Jailed by Boniface VIII, he/it didn't leave his/its prison that in 1303, to the Pontiff's death, and passed his/her/its last three years in the contemplation, to the chaplaincy of the Clarisseses of San Lorenzo, in his/her/its native Umbria. He/it died in the Christmas eve, while singing a hymn of praise.

Biography: Dr P. WATER SPANIEL, Blissful Jacopone of Todi, Edict. Franciscans, 1943, 78 pages. Works: Dr P. WATER SPANIEL, Some poetries of Fra Jacopone Todi da, transcribed of the ombrien, Desclée of Brouwer, 420 pages. J. PACHEU, Jacopone of Todi, (Poems in ombrien and French preceded of a survey), Tralin, 1914, 400 pages.

THE DANCE OF LOVE

That all lover who likes the Lord Vienna to the dance while singing his/her/its love! That he/it comes to the dance, quite enamored, Wanting the one that made it previously; That of ardent love his/her/its blazing heart transforms Itself in big devotion. In this ardent fire all full of devotion, Such an insane that holds in place, That kissing the Christ, indeed he/it kisses it And that in this game founds his/her/its cSur. Oh my heart melts as to fire ice. When to my Lord I am embraced, While shouting: "Love, of love I exhaust myself, In the lying love, of inebriate love. & Inebriate raquo of love, the lovers exclaim: "To the Christ Amour, sing the new songs. Bless-Ie over all saints Since the love sends them of such goods. & raquo The love that is us in the given Thus soul sent it the almighty Christ; It wants that all man likes of it to him ardently: Is to him donor and you receiving. You are receiving of the truthful Christ Who descends in you depending on whether he/it pleases to him. My soul, how will be you capable to welcome - audacity! - the one that made to you?

You will know it higher than reason, Without the knowledge, by the feeling, Letting all labor - as I say it the only feeling will reach the love. Touching the love, of love will be touched. Clothing the love, will come apart of you. Of you will be entire detached And transformed in the one that guides you. Love, love, where therefore you did lead me? Love, love, pulled me out of me. Love, love, doesn't know where went: I entered in furnace in love. I burn to fire and languish while shouting, Living I die, dying I am in life. I don't like but I am thirsty of the love. And my desire is to unite me to it. That all lover who likes the Lord Vienna to the dance while singing his/her/its love!

OH CRISTO, MIO DILETTO,

Oh Christ, my Beloved, Love that inflames, Of the one that likes you ardently You take the entire heart. You take the entire heart, Jesus, of the one that likes you. Make-Iui to feel the sweetness Of your soft fountain. It is you only that the soul wants When it tasted you: Entire she/it ignites Of this divine ardor. If our soul approaches, No other affection is not able to more live in it. His/her/its joy is without end In this pleasure And satisfaction Where all is new. Of this new conscience In herself she/it is delighted, And the heart also advances Under the motion of the mind. The soul wakes up, Listen to the harmony, And in this melody It languishes of love. The love makes me languish In this extreme passion. Oh Christ, lover Lord, Become madman for me, Love that created me so that at my turn I like you, Love doesn't linger anymore: Why you don't take my Love, take my heart And don't linger anymore. He/it wanders and get lost Me then to unite it. Jesus, make me taste your hidden manna. More my soul tastes there, More it collects herself/itself. My soul collects itself: I believe that it is the instant. She/it doesn't see more outside In such a rapture. In only one feeling The love makes it hold, And the mind delights it Above this place. As the mind delights it Above this place, Begin a happy song, A hymn of love. She/it passes the stream That was an obstacle TO the impetus of his/her/its heart: And his/her/its heart goes higher. The heart leaves higher, Overgrown by the love.He/it contemplates Beauty In a flaming ardor. Oh soft rest That this passage That lulls the beloved to transform it! To transform it No, not of I district Not of reasoning, And not of calculation! When intelligence Sees the immensity Faith and hope are thrown outside. He/it passes faith and hope And also all others grants, The true access of love, Of lover charity,: It is this dilection Of which speaks the evangelist, The perfect charity That outside hunts the fear. Who carries slave's name And makes reign the Real love and very noble. Salary or vile profit: No, the faithful wife doesn't want such a love And doesn't serve for the gain. The wife who is faithful: She/it remains united to the lamb Without hopeless pain and without pain. Still stingy toward the Christ She/it cannot think about no one else. She/it made the big conquest, With him she/it wants to stay. Because it is reasonable and just to give him all his/her/its heart. If you give him your heart, Give without reserving anything: It would not be honor For the King of the Paradise

To turn your eyes toward Him Without revealing your works. Home in the Christ's arms For a perfect union. The soul that is united In the true unit, The love donned it Of the bridal dress, Of this charity That inflamed the saints And abridged the time In their race to the love. She/it runs to the love, The quite hastened soul. She/it climbs with devotion And short without stopping. The love that delighted it So cruelly wounded it That the wife touched to death Remains without knowledge.Love, you consume me: So strong you wounded me! You see, the heart misses to me: Me then to continue. You put me a boundary-mark That me then to turn. For that cannot see you He/it is not harder jail. Oh, the very hard jail That the one where I am secluded! I see them, your sacred grants, And envy them Especially as I lost the use For which my soul was made of it. I don't contemplate your face anymore As you had stopped it. To the principle he/it was stopped That the man would see his God. And because he/it was deprived some, He/it became vile and unhappy. So turned the sin And the vicious desire. As he/it had been better to remain at the Paradise!

Oh you, modern lovers, Why not to transform you? Take for models Of other lovers Who borrowed The narrow and stiff way. She/it appeared large to them and easy So much their ardor was big! The saints passed By the sword and the knife; All have been marked In the blood of the lamb. They reached to the highest Sky Where is the real peace; To the Christ who is all their joy They are united in the love.
Poems translated of the ombrien by Ivan Gobry Jacques of Milan Second half of the XIIIe s.

This more or less unknown author (one knows that he/it was reader in theology in the convent of the Minor brothers of Milan is especially famous to have written the Stimulus Amoris, or Sting of love. This small treaty of prayer, a long time defined in Bonaventure saint, knew a very big success in the centuries that followed. He/it is rented notably by Gerson, Louis of Grentlde and holy François of Dirty. Although of a style often affected, one finds a beautiful impetus of the heart there, in the line at a time of Bernard saint and François saint. Bibliography: The sting of love, composed by the Brother JACQUES OF MILAN, translated in French by the Father UBALD OF alençon, Bookstore Saint-François, 1922, 186 pages,.

ON THE CHRIST'S PASSION

RUN of everywhere, oh peoples; admire God's love to your consideration, your blindness and your mischief towards him. If God's Son wanted to unite inseparably at the human nature, how much our soul should unite more gladly it inseparably to it! If God's Son wanted, with such an ardor of charity, to unite thus to very vile ashes, with how much more of greed each should open him his/her/its heart to receive it! What is therefore the madness of the soul who, in his/her/its carelessness, prefer to become attached to garbage? God's Son didn't don the flesh so that the man becomes attached to the flesh; but as himself, in his/her/its carnal existence, overwhelmed the flesh and crucified it, despised what is carnal, while always holding his/her/its united soul to God his/her/its Father, so the man must mortify his flesh and must always make higher himself until the divine. Oh astounding blindness of the man! Composed of soul and flesh (and the soul is without nobler comparison than the flesh) it spends all his/her/its time to provide the flesh of that for that it asks, and it disregards his/its soul as if it was not anything; it doesn't try to feed it, nor to nourish it, nor to Really get it rest in the sovereign, whereas yet nothing softer, of sweeter, of more delectable is not worth the pain that one reaches it. Because everywhere God offers himself/itself to the man, and of himself he doesn't require another payment that his/her/its Son's death. The bodily things perpetually flee us, and even at the cost of the worry, the pain and the anguish, no one can possess them fully in this world, unless we said that that one possesses fully that despises all things fully. Alas, what is more astonishing, it is that the soul acts thus by a delicate solicitation of the flesh and no by his/her/its constraint.

It is voluntarily that she/it submits to the flesh, that she/it endeavors to accomplish his/her/its good pleasure and despises the submissiveness to his/her/its God, - although she/it receives exhortations, kindness, interior inspiration; even for his/her/its own good, that means for his/her/its personal utility, she/it refuses to make God's will. Indeed, if the soul didn't make lower to the animals themselves, it should like God of which it is the picture above all, and not to worry about the rest. But since you like the flesh, oh soul, don't like another flesh that the one of the Christ, because it is her that, for you and for the salute of the whole human kind, is offered itself on the altar of the Cross: ruminate his/her/its Passion therefore constantly in your heart! This continual meditation of the Christ's Passion will raise your intelligence; what you must make. to meditate or to feel, it will indicate it to you; it will inflame you for the effort; it will make you like the humiliation, the contempt and the pain; it règlera your thought as your speech and your action. Oh desirable Passion! Oh admirable death! What of more astonishing than the death gives life, that the injuries heal, that blood whitened and purify, that quickest pain brings the sweetest sweetness, that the open side united the heart to the heart! Don't stop being stunned when the darkened sun illuminates more again, when the extinct fire burns more, when the ignominious passion brings the glory. Makes indeed marvelous: on the Cross, the thirsty Christ intoxicates, the naked Christ decorates clothes the virtue; his/her/its hands nailed to the Cross deliver us, his/her/its transfixed feet made us to run; while expiring he blows life, while dying on wood he calls us at the sky.

Oh agreeable Passion, that transforms the one that meditates it, and doesn't return it only angelic, but divine! Staying by this meditation in the Christ's sufferings, he/it doesn't carry attention anymore to himself, but to only God; always he/it sees his/its suffering Lord, and wants with to be in charge him of the Cross; he/it carries in his/its heart the one that holds in his/her/its hand the sky and the earth, and for him accepts all burden of a light heart; he/it wants with him to be crowned of thorns and receives for crown the hope of the glory; he/it wants with to shiver him without clothes on Wood, and is burnt of the immense ardor of the love; he/it wants with to taste him vinegar, and he/it drinks a wine of a comical sweetness; he/it wants to spread with him on the Cross and to receive the outrages, and the angels honor it, and the blissful Virgin adopts it for son. With the Christ he/it wants to sadden itself, and there is it in joy; with him he/it wants to undergo the tribulation: and he/it receives some of abundant consolations; to his/her/its suffering he/it wants to unite his/her/its suffering: and he/it is transported of rejoicing; with the Christ he/it wants to hang to the Cross: and the Christ kisses it with a marvelous sweetness; with him he wants to incline his/her/its face marked by the terror of the death; and the Christ, raising the head, kisses it of a sweet to kiss. Oh agreeable death, oh delicious death! Oh, that I don't have summer instead this Cross, nailed to the Christ by my hands and by my feet! I would have told Joseph surely of Arimathie: & laquo doesn't remove it to me, but bury me with it in the sepulcher; I don't want to have separated more of it & raquo. But since me then to act thus with my body, at least I want to make it with my cSur. It is good to stay with him; in him I want to raise three tents: one in his/her/its hands, another in his/her/its feet and a third, perpetual, in his/her/its side: there, I want to rest and to sleep, to eat and to drink, to read and to pray. There I will speak at his/her/its Heart and I will get him what I will want. That making, I will follow the traces of my very soft Mother whose soul has been transfixed by the sword of his/her/its Son's Passion. Wounded, I will always speak surely to him, and I will incline it to my to want. And not only I will appear crucified with his/her/its Son, but coming back to the manger, I will be lying, small child, with him, and I will be able to thus with his/her/its Son to drink the milk of his/her/its breast. Mingling the mother's milk with the Son's blood, I will make myself a delicious beverage of it.Oh injuries all in love with my Lord Jesus Christ! I penetrated one day in them the open eyes, and my eyes were filled of blood; there seeing more, I began to advance me while feeling some hands until I arrive to the intimate innards of his/her/its charity; I was surrounded some then with all parts, and I cannot come back. It is therefore there that I live; there I eat the food of which he/it eats, and there I intoxicate myself of his/her/its beverage; there I abound of such a sweetness that me then to translate it. The one that lived in the virginal breast for the sinners condescends today to carry me, me miserable, in his/her/its own innards. But I dread that comes the day of the childbirth that me dépossèderait of the delights of which I enjoy. Probably, if he/it puts me to the world, he/it should nurse like a mother me of his/her/its breast, to wash me of his/her/its hands, to carry me in his/her/its arms, to comfort me of his/her/its kissings, to warm me on his/her/its chest,. Oh, I know what I will make well: that he/it comes me out of him as much time as he will want it, I know that his/her/its injuries are always opened; by them me pénètrerai again within, and I will return every time there, until I am united him inseparably. Oh blindness of Adam's children that doesn't know how to enter in the Christ by his/her/its injuries! They work in vain beyond their strengths, whereas are open the doors of rest. Do you ignore that the Christ is the joy of the blesseds? Why do you linger therefore to enter in this joy by the openings of his/her/its body? How do you lose the reason? Does the beatitude of the angels offer itself to you, is the surrounding wall broken and do you disregard to enter? Maybe you wait that your body falls in dust, you extra that the soul cannot rest in this life in the Christ? But believe me, oh man, if you endeavor to penetrate in him by these narrow openings, not only your soul, but your body will also find rest and a marvelous sweetness; what is carnal and stretches toward the flesh will become, thanks to this penetration in the injuries, spiritual to such point, that it will count for nothing all pleasures, except those that it tastes there. He/it will even arrive that the soul, by obedience or utility, esteem that it is necessary to retire, whereas the flesh, enticed by this sweetness, will sustain that it is necessary to remain. However, you don't believe it, if the flesh feels such a sweetness, in what suavity the soul won't diving be, it who, by these openings, is united at the Christ's Heart? Me then certainly to express it to you, but tempts the experience, and you will know it.Opened a room filled of aromatics and medicines. Between by the windows of the wounds and take the remedy that heals, renew, protect, canned food. Take the different sorts that agree to you, choose all electuaries that attract your lust. If you want to be seduced by the ointments of the sweetness, don't hesitate to introduce you in these injuries. Opened the door of the Paradise: the spear of Longin separated the flaming sword. Here is the Wood of life pierced in his/her/its branches and in his/her/its stock: in these holes you place your feet so, that means your affections, you won't be able to pick his/her/its fruits. Opened the treasure of the divine wisdom and the eternal suavity: between therefore by the opening of the injuries and, in full knowledge, you will receive the delights of it. Oh, happy the throws, happy the nails that received the favor to open such a door! Oh, if I had been instead this spear, I would not have liked to take the Christ's side more, but I would have said: "

There is my rest for the centuries of the centuries; there will be my home, the one that I chose" OH insane and lazy hearts! To possess a vanity, you pass by useless exits and very often you cannot leave more; but to possess God's Son, sovereign Well, burst of the eternal splendor, you don't enter by the doors opened of his/her/its wounds! Oh soul created to God's picture, how can you contain yourself again? Here it is that your very soft Spouse, done wound for you and now returned glorious, do want to kiss you and to grant you his/her/its most tender kissings, and do you disregard to precipitate you toward him? It is because of his/her/its immense love that he/it is himself open the side, in order to give you his/her/its Heart; he/it wanted to pierce itself/themselves the hands and the feet so that, coming to him, your hands enter in his/her/its hands and your feet in his/her/its feet, and that you united inseparably to him. I implore of it to you therefore: while putting, according to the apostle's advice, & laquo all to profit ", endeavor to arrive to such an experience; and if she/it appears good to you, don't abandon it anymore. I don't doubt some, if you achieved it, all, outside of her, will seem bitter to you. Then you will wish entered once, that the doors of the injuries are closed for more power to take some. You will wonder about your state of blindness and the one of the other in such a domain; you will yet be in joy because of the big sweetness that you will feel, and will ignite your heart so ardently that, endeavoring literally to come out of your body, he/it will want to live materially in the Christ's wounds; because he/it will be intoxicated of a sweetness and a devotion so high that hardly he/it will be able to conceive other desires. Oh injuries that split the hearts of stone, that inflame the frozen souls and liquefying by their love the hearts of steel!Oh indeed our life, our sweetness, and our hope! By the meditation of the Passion you arrive so to this sweetness of which I spoke, or to a bigger, yet make sure to want to meditate this Passion in view of a temporal satisfaction, but to burn your Creator's love to the memory of his/her/its inestimable kindness. And has what must be your unceasing prayer: Lord, Father Saint, by your mercy, by the death that your Son endured for me, by his/her/its Mother's eminent holiness, by the merits of the blissful François and all Saints, grant to the sinner that I follow, make indignant all your kindness, to like you you only and to burn your love always. Give me a constant thirst of your honor, and to the heart a continuous profit of your Passion. Make that I recognize my misery and that I want to be by all despised and strained to the feet. That nothing touches me more, otherwise you; that nothing saddens me more, otherwise the sin. Amen.Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry

B. Raymond Lulle 1235-1315

Here is one of the most extraordinary men of the history of the church. His/her/its own century, yet so rich in strong personalities and in ecstatic souls, recognized it like an unusually original face and like a sublime spiritual life master. Doctor fantasticus, Doctor illuminatus,: these two nicknames reveal a double title of glory, one recalls us the superhuman enterprises that he/it tempted, as well in the intellectual order that in the apostolic order; the other suggests us the mystical love of which he/it radiated during fifty years, since the conversion until the martyrdom. The whole life of this love pilgrim, as he/it titles himself/itself himself, is enlivened of a devouring passion for the Christ. It is the Christ who appears to him when, sénéchal of the king of Majorca, he/it leads a dissolute life: to his/her/its call, he/it abandons all goods and all his/her/its turpitudes. It is with the Christ that he/it retires in the solitude of the Randan mount to lead this life of asceticism and abandonment that will inspire the most delicious passages of his/her/its work there. It is to convert the infidels to the Christ that he/it browses the world until the clinch the undue and the Baltic, that he/it founds the missionary school of Miramar where the Franciscans will study the oriental languages; that he/it writes his/her/its abound theological and philosophical work, and notably this Large Art where is consigned the first principles of the mathematical logic.

It is the Christ's that he/it asks for the martyrdom, and in the Christ's joy that he/it pours his/its blood to Candle, stoned by the populace. The spiritual writings of Raymond Lulle have been written in catalan, this dialect so Poetic that, with the Provencal language, represent one of the purest branches of this language of oc spoken by the troubadours. Original are already the voluminous Book of Contemplation and the charming Tree of the love Philosophy, but most remarkable is certainly Blanquerna. épico-mystical novel, whose adventures are of constants opportunities to teach the love, the virtue and the art to contemplate; he/it ends by the famous Book of the friend and the beloved, compilation of 366 moral metaphors, aphorisms written by the Blanquerna hermit,: one for every day of the year, without forgetting the leap years. It is necessary, on the other hand, to mention a set of poems of which most famous are Raymond's Song, short autobiography, and the Song of the Déconfort, long scream of discouragement thrown by the aging apostle before the indifference of the big with regard to his/her/its work. Biography: JEAN SOULAIROL, Raymond Lulle, Ed. Franciscans, 1951, 160 pages,. Work: RAYMOND LULLE, the friend and the beloved, translate the catalan by MARIUS ANDRÉ (preceded of an interesting preface and follow-up of abundant excerpts of the tree of the love Philosophy) Crès, 1921, 234 pages.

RAYMOND'S SONG

I was created, being I was to serve God, and that he/it was honored: I fell in many sins, In God's anger I am put. To me Jesus came crucified: He/it wants that God by me is liked. The morning, I was going to ask for forgiveness God; I made my confession In the pain and contrition. In charity and in prayer. In hope and in God devotion condescends to keep me. The monastery of Miramar was given to the Minor brothers to preach to the Saracens.Between the grapevine and the hayloft, Love took me, made me like God: I am between sighs and tears. Of God, Father, Son and Mind, Of whom are Saint Trinidad, By demonstration I treated. God Fils, some Sky descended: Of a virgin he/it is born, God and man named Christ.
The world was in damnation: Jesus, by whom the created world was, Died to give him the salute. Jesus went up to the Sky on his/her/its throne, He will come to judge the bad and the bo08: The tears won't be able to get forgiveness. I discovered the new science to teach the truth TO all, and to destroy the mistake. The Saracens will be baptized, Tartar and Jews, many will pray thanks to the knowledge that God gave to me. I took the cross, and I sent My loves to the Lady of the sinners: That of her comes me a big I help My heart is house of love And my eyes fountains of tears: I am between joy and pains. I am old, poor and despised man, By hopeless born man I am not helped And I undertook a too big work. I have by the world much searched, Many good example I gave: I am known little and beloved. I want to die pilgrim of love. To be big, I don't have fear Of the bad princes and bad pastors. Every day, I see the dishonor That to God makes the big Lords Who put the world in mistake. I ask God to send religious, scholarly and truthful messengers to teach that God is man.

I ask the Virgin some that God man made himself And all saints to her submitted That in hell I am not put. Praise, honor to the biggest Lord To which I address my love: That he/it withdraws splendor of it! J e is unworthy to make honor TO God, so much I am big sinner: I am of books troubadour. Where that I go, I tempt to make big good, And at the end, I could not make anything because I have anger and weight. Full of tears and contrition Want so much to God to shout forgiveness That he/it will want my books to grant. That God gives me holiness, Life, health, joy and liberty, That he keeps me of the pain and the sin. To God I am abandoned quite: That bad mind or angry man don't have on me to can. That God remains at the Sky and in the elements, The plants and all living being: That they hurt me or torments. That God gives me scholarly, Religious, pure, humble and subject mates to work to his/her/its honor.

THE MORAL METAPHORS

Many lovers agreed to like a Beloved that filled them all of love: and each had for treasure his/her/its Beloved with his/her/its pleasant thoughts, thanks to which he/it supported pleasing tribulations. Do "say, friend, said the beloved, will you have patience if I double your languors? " - Yes, so long as you double my loves. "Mad friend, why do destroy you your person? Why do you spend your deniers, do you abandon the delights of this world and go you despised among people? He/it answered: "To honor the honor of my Beloved, that is by more of men désaimé and dishonored that honored and beloved.Between fear and hope, love built its inn: he/it lives thoughts, and dies of oblivion when the foundations are on the delights of this world. The birds sang the dawn, and the friend, who is the dawn, awakened; and the birds finished their song, and the friend died for the beloved in the dawn. The friend was sleepy to have worked hard to look for his/her/its Beloved, and he was afraid to forget his/her/its Beloved. Then he/it cried, so that he/it didn't fall asleep and that his/her/its Beloved was not absentee of his/her/its memory. & laquoOiseau who sings love, demand to my Beloved why he/it torments me by the love who took me of his/her/its servant to be? The bird answered: "If you didn't support the pains by love, how would like you your Beloved?

The friend went pensive by the roads of his/her/its Beloved. He/it stumbled and fell among the thorns: and he/it seemed him that they were flowers and that he/it was on a bed of love. One asked the friend why his/her/its Beloved was glorious. He/it answered: & laquo because he/it is Glory.. One says: "Why is he/it powerful? "He/it answered: "Because he/it is Power. . - And reason is he/it sweet? - Because him is Suavity - And reason is it agreeable? - Because he/it is Love. The friend feared that his/her/its Beloved missed him in his/her/its first necessities, and the beloved désenamoura his/her/its friend - The penitent friend had contrition in his/her/its heart and the beloved returned to the heart of the friend hope and charity, and to his/her/its tears and tears so that the love came back in the friend.

The friend saw himself/itself prisoner, and linked, and struck, and kill for the love of his/her/its Beloved. Those that tormented it asked him: Where is your Beloved? He/it answered: Here it" is in the multiplication of my loves and in the support that he/it brings to my torments. The friend aIlait by the viIle like a mad as singing his/her/its Beloved and people asked him if he/it had lost the sense. II answered that his/her/its Beloved had taken its will and that he had given him his/her/its understanding: because of it, he had the memory only to remember of his/her/its Beloved ". The friend's heart went up in the heights of the beloved not to be driven to like in the abysses of this world. And when he/it was close to the beloved, he/it contemplated it in the sweetness and the pleasure; and the beloved descended it in this world so that he/it contemplated it in the tribulations and the languors.

One asked the friend: Are "QueIleses your riches? II answered: "The poverty that I support for my Beloved" - And what is your rest? - The languor that I give the love - And that your physician is? - The confidence that I have in my Beloved. And your master who is? II answered that these were the signs that the creatures give his/her/its Beloved. The bird sang on a branch of feuiIles and flowers, and wind agitated the feuiIles and brought the odor of the flowers. The friend asked the bird for what the movement of the feuiIles and the odor of the flowers meant. II answered: "The leaves in their movement mean obedience, and the odor suffering and displeasure. "The friend went dérisant his/her/its Beloved, and he met two friends that, with love and tears, greeted themselves, kissed and kissed themselves. The friend fell in swoon, so much the two friends recalled him his/her/its Beloved.

Do "say, mad, if your Beloved you désaimait, that you would make? II answered that he would like it not to die, for this reason that the dice love died and that the love is life. The friend shouted all high to people and said that the love ordered them to like in aIlant and while remaining seated, while staying up and while sleeping, while speaking and while being quiet, while buying and while selling, while crying and while laughing, in pleasure and in languor, in the gain and in the loss: that in all things, whatever eIles was, they liked, because the love was them command. The beloved left of its friend. And the friend looked for his/her/its Beloved in his/her/its memory and in his/her/its understanding to be able to like it.

The friend recovered his/her/its Beloved, and asked to him where he had been. II answered: "In the absence of your memory and in the ignorance of your intelligence ". Do "say mad, are you ashamed before people when they see you crying for your Beloved? "He/it answered that the shame without the sin is absence of love at that knows how to like. The beloved sowed in the heart of the friend desires, sighs, virtues and loves. The friend watered seeds with tears and tears. The friend said: "If you, other lovers, want fire, come to my heart and light your lamps there; and if you want water, Hold to my eyes that pour some tears; and if you want thoughts of love, come to take them in my meditations.

The friend died of pleasure and lived languors; the pleasures and the torments agreed and united to be only a same thing in the friend's will. And it is why the friend died and lived in the same instant. The friend met his/her/its Beloved, and lives it very noble and powerful and worthy of all honor. And he/it tells to him that he/it wondered strongly about what people liked it and knew it and honored it so little, whereas he/it was so worthy of it. And the beloved answered to him that he/it had big disappointment, because he/it had created the man for in to be liked, known and honored, but on one thousand men hundred feared it only and honored it; and on these hundred, four twenty ten feared it not to receive the punishment of it, and ten liked it to receive the glory of it, and there was not no one that liked it for his/her/its goodness and his/her/its nobility.

When the friend had heard these words, he cried strongly on the dishonor of his/her/its Beloved, and says: "Beloved, who gave to the man so much and so much the honored ace why the man has you him in such oblivion? "The signs of the love that the friend has for his/her/its Beloved are: to the beginning the tears, and to the middle the tribulations and at the end the death. And it is by these signs that the friend preaches to the lovers of his/her/its Beloved. The beloved holds the love very loud above, and the friend is held below very low the love. And the love that is held at the middle lowers the beloved toward the friend and raise the friend toward the beloved. And of this lowering and this elevation lives and takes beginning the love by which languishes the friend and is served the beloved. Do "say, mad, that it is that the love? "He/it answered that the love is this thing that puts the free men in servitude and give to the serfs the liberty. And such is the question: is the love more close to the liberty or the servitude? Texts translated of the catalan by Ivan Gobry

Saint Marguerite of Cortone 1247-1297

Girl of industrious farmers, Marguerite is browbeaten by a pitiless cruel mother. To sixteen years, delighted to escape this inhospitable house, she/it lets herself/itself seduce by the young knight of Montepulziano, follows it in his/her/its castle, has a son of it and remain nine years his/her/its concubine. His/her/its lover's tragic death, murdered by a neighboring Lord, is going to be for Marguerite the opportunity of the conversion: thrown outside with his/her/its child by the knight's family, embossed by his/her/its father, she/it will meet mercy by the Minor brothers of Cortone. To thirty years, after the first signs of an ardent penitence, she/it dons the homespun of the tertiary. During twenty years, she/it will live in a mortification and a humility that will be worth him to be raised by the Christ in the summits of the contemplation. It iis this long continuation of revelations, ecstasies and familiar interviews with the Lord, that the saint's confessor, the father Giunta Bevegnati, related. The narration lacks order and the facts are of an unequal interest, especially as their multiplication generates the monotony. However, a lot of passages, taken separately, can be considered like jewels of the mystical literature. Biography: R.M. PIERAZZI: Saint Marguerite of Cortone according to fra Giunta Bevegnati, French text of B. DAYEN, Franciscan Editions, 1947, illustrated, 136 pages. CEuvre: The intimate Life of Saint Marguerite of Cortone, written by the Father Giunta Bevegnati, translated on the original text by the Abbé J. BRIVAIN, Lyons, 1900, 39° pages,.

THE CHRIST'S EXHORTATION

Remember, my pauvrette, remember of all graces, of all lights that I granted you to bring back you to me. Remember in what state you returned toLaviano, close to your father, after the tragic death of your unfortunate accomplice, bathed of tears, crushed, shattered by the grief, the torn face, the clothes of mourning of which you were donned, full of shame and confusion,.

Remember the coarse manner of which your father received you to your cruel mother's instigation; forgetful of duties of his/her/its fatherhood, he hunted you brutally of his/her/its home. Knowing where to go, private of advice and emergency, sorry foundation under the fig-tree of the garden, you implored me humbly and asked that I was in the future your master, your father, your spouse and your Lord. Then the ancient snake, you seer repulsed by your father, to your shame and to the detriment of your salute, seizes this opportunity to persuade you that the beauty of your body, the freshness of your youth, the humiliation of your exile was for you of the sufficient and extenuating reasons to throw you in the crime, insinuating you that, everywhere where you would go, you would find accomplices of your crimes and the worshippers of your beauty. But me, the interior beautiful reformer, in love of this beauty that youhad just desecrated, I undertook to raise your conscience by the light of my divine inspirations, I inspired you to win Cortone and to submit you to the obedience of my Minor brothers. Walled by this celestial help, you took, no more than that to linger, the way that I indicated to you, you obeyed the brothers while submitting your will to their discipline and to their rule. Remember that the sovereign remedy for your soul, and of your salute works to take since the principle him if compromised, is in the respect and the filial fear that I inspired you henceforth with regard to the Minor, loaded brothers to direct you.

These arrangements where you entered in frightened the invisible enemy and, walled by my grace, you could floor the one that had sworn your loss. And in truth, didn't you tremble? Didn't your face blush of shame if you came to meet some brother of the order of your blissful Father, either to the church, either in the houses, either through the streets? You didn't dare, in his/her/its presence, nor to converse, nor to stop you at the secular. Remember that while preparing your soul to the complete, absolute contempt, of all profane ornament, I taught you to like me while sequestrating you with sweetness of the trade, even licit, of people of the world. Remember that with the help of my grace you succeeded to deprive your body of the most common food then qu57;il was accustomed to the delights of the flesh. Remember that it is again by my help that you had courage to macerate it by continual fastings, that you trampled the gentleness in your clothes, while choosing soon with joy, for layer, of the twining stems, soon of wood, and even of the stones, and the most often the naked earth, without other pillow that the stone. Remember the signaled favors of which I filled you, grace of compunction, grace of the tears, grace of fear, to such point that you asked the Minor brothers, in the middle of a torrent of tears, and diving in an ocean of pain, if me, your Creator and your Savior, I would receive you in my mercy and in my holy Paradise after all crimes of which you had made guilty, and you made the same question to people of the world, pulling them some tears at the sight of the sobs of which you were yourself choked. Remind you with what sweetness, what suavity then, I ease the bitterness of your tears while showing you the mysteries of my virginal Nativity, the sublime dignity of my Immaculate Mother, and the eternal joy of my saints. These motives were so to speak the principle of your conversion, after your seducer's death that kept you, in spite of you, and during nine years, linked in the crime and dishonor. Remember, poor girl, the crossing of this pond, only, in the middle of the night, where the ancient enemy wanted to drown you with your accomplice, as you got ready, by your crimes, to renew the torments of my Passion! But my divine clemency kept you and you have been delivered by an infinite mercy! Also remember that whereas you took pleasure in the world, and that you led a life full of darkness, vices and sins, I made myself myself your master, your guide, and inspired you a real compassion for the poor people and the grief-strickens. I made you taste one so big joy of the solitude then, that you exclaimed in an access of devotion: "Oh! that he/it would feel good here to taste the delights of the prayer there! Oh! as one would sing well here God's praises! With what security, with what peace one would pass here his/her/its days in the penitence! & raquo

Remember that, in spite of the darkness that enveloped your soul, you deplored your fall and you told those that greeted you that, if they knew your ashamed life, not only they would not greet you, but that they would not even like to speak you. Remember that after your conversion, by a favor all free of my part, I placed you under the protection and in the company of two noble and devout women, Marinaria and Ranaria. Remember that then you began to hate, to despise this beauty that you were once so clever, so industrious to keep to the detriment of your soul, now you student to despise it and to make she abject to the other by the cilice, by the fastings, the penitences, until the effusion of blood, wanting to destroy it as much as he was in your power. Finally remember that the fire of my love transfigured you so that you implored with process, with tears, and in any case the guard of the Minor brothers to give you the liveries of the penitence in order to approach you of me while moving away you of the century.

THE CHRIST'S PROMIS

MY daughter, as well as for the salute of the world I trained my Mother, the a lot of Saint Virgin Marie, in the same way, all kept proportion, I choose you for mirror and mother of the sinners. And since, by my grace, I destine you to be magnificent in the sky, I will make of you a saint on the earth. I should not say: I will make to you; because, by my infinite mercy, you are already! You say that you are deprived of all virtue, and me, I tell to you that you are decorated some. You say that you are poor because you miss me, and me I tell to you that you possess in me an infinite treasure. My daughter, in the heart of which I find rest, I don't name you the lily of my garden, but well of my field, because the perfume of your virtues will penetrate those same that are rotted of vices, and those that has for me no feeling will feel attracted to the odor of your holiness. And as well as the breeze carries the odor of the lilies far away, me I will carry the odor of your virtues everywhere...

Rest to astonish you if I give myself to you as me finds you. Your soul is distracted, and tepid in a lot of works. Contemplate holy Madeleine by the garden of the sepulcher: I presented myself to her under the shape that she/it had me in his/her/its mind. I made you the scale of the sinners so that they go up toward me by the examples of your life. They will imitate your abstinences, your fastings, your humility, your prayers, your tribulations that you supported for me with so much readiness,. They will imitate the sweetness of your holy conversations, the leniency that was the seal of your life. They will imitate the honesty of your sisters since your conversion, and the care that you took to escape the world... I tell to you me, that you are my elected, my sister, my daughter, ingenuous and rubicund Marguerite in me, holy and elevated by my power. One won't find in the world a heart that either capable to think and to understand to what degree of size I raised you. You say that you cannot satiate yourself of my love, and me, I won't stop liking you nor will want to impose boundary-marks to your love; however I confess you that I granted you so big graces that you must not wait more for some up to here. I won't tell to you that I liked you until this day, to stop in the future. You tell to me, in your pain, that your heart got cold in its charity; it is an illusion based on the infirmity of your body that now forbids you some fastings, prayers and other works that you had custom to practice once; in spite of it, I tell you in truth that, although this body appears nearly private of life, it lives in me and always in his/her/its first devotion. How would he/it be some otherwise, since you gave me everything? He/it is true that what you gave to me is little thing, but the God who knows all doesn't ignore that if you could have given more you would have made it gladly... Be ingenuous by your innocence, ardent by your love, you will be the third light of the order of Saint-François, being him the first in the order of the Minor brothers, the blissful Claire the second in the order of the Nuns, and you, the third in the order of the Penitents...

THE PRAYER OF DAISY

I first start with invoking the a lot of Saint Trinidad, that is only one living, eternal, infinite God; I recommend myself to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Redeemer, made man for us, and to his/her/its holy Mother Marie our lawyer. I invoke the different choirs of the saints then while starting with the seraphs scorched of love. I come back then to Our Lord who took a body and a soul counterparts to ours in the heart of the blissful Virgin Marie by the operation of the Saint Mind. I meditate on his/her/its miraculous childbirth and without pain. I think about the rejoicing of the Angels, to the worships of the Maguses, to the flight of the poor Child-Jesus, to the fatigues of his/her/its journey. I pass of to his/her/its ineffable interview there with the Samaritan, to the defense that he/it took the adulterous woman, to his/her/its condescension towards the Chananéenne, towards the lepers, the blinds and the paralytic of the swimming pool. I admire the purity, the gentleness, then the beauty of these feet without shoes that browse the cities, the villages, the cities, the deserts, that work on the furious streams without being flooded. I contemplate the miracles that Jesus operates, the contrition of Matthieu and Madeleine, the miraculous resurrection of Lazares and the other, again.

And, raising me thus of degrees in degrees, I return in union with them the infinite actions of graces due to the Creator of all these marvels. I also return to every order of saints the praises that are due to The one that establishes them in the holiness, and I get thus, the day of their feast, a new abundance of graces. I pursue my prayer, alas! probably with my tepidness and my usual carelessness, returning graces to God that, without no merit of my part, filled me with so many kindness. I immerse myself again with the whole devotion of my mind and as much as our Lord allows it to me in this quick and secret source, and there, all thirsty of love, my soul gets damaged in the contemplation of the Notre-Seigneur Passion, in the traitor's kiss, in the so vile and so abject price that one gave for this incomparable treasure, in the ignominies of the spits, the bellows and the obscene words, in the anguish of the cross, the rip of the nails, of blindfold the corrupt witnesses, the iniquitous judgments, the perfidy of the Jews, of the good thief who took the defense of Notre-Seigneur, of Jesus who forgives to him and puts back his/her/its Mother to the beloved disciple. Through sobs, of the tears, I contemplate then and I adore my Jesus watered of gall, I see the darkened sun, the cleft rocks, my Savior inclining the head and putting back his/her/its soul between the Father's hands. I stand near the Cross, damaged in the deepest sadness, wanting to die with the Virgin Saint, my Mother, and asking him to transfix my soul with the same sword that tears it, imploring it with tears to let share me the ineffable pains that she/it endures herself. Because it is for me, poor sinner, and to purchase me that my Savior died. I tell you all these things, to you that are my confessor, so that you saw if my life is in conformity with the precepts of the holy Writing and if I am not victim of the illusions of the bad mind who hides under the coat of the virtue. Without your order I would have spoken of it to you never, and I want henceforth not to be obliged anymore to make it, because if one remembers what I was and what I follow again presently, only one thing appears astonishing, it is that so many graces have been granted to a creature who is only worthy of the eternal fire.

PRIVILEGE OF THE SIMPLICITY

I am soon similar to a prudent and modest wife, soon surrounded of light, mute to the point not to be able to speak to anybody, soon even blazing of a charity so astonishing that I feel excited to endure all sorts of torments and me then to satiate me so much of my God wanted; soon finally, I am so destitute that he/it seems me not to be able to say anything just, although the Lord inspires to me. But I already spoke to you my simplicity and my muteness, and the Savior told to me that then I was to him more pleasant than at the hours where he filled me with graces. Our Lord tells to me again: & laquo has a lot of scientists in the world to which I don't make honor to maintain me with them as I converse with you, because they don't have your innocence, nor your simplicity. "Texts translated of Italian by abbot I. Brivain

Bse Angèle of Foligno1249-1309

This blissful, one of the biggest mystics of the Middle Ages, lived until the quarantine an inattentive and guilty life. Converted brutally, she/it donned the homespun of the tertiary and began a rigorous penitence. She/it climbs the steepest heights of the spiritual life quickly, and exercised around her a deep and lasting influence. The set of the mystical works of Angèle is contained in the voluminous work title: The Book of the experience of the true Supporters. The text is not of its hand, but has been written by his/her/its successive secretaries, of which the first and most important was the brother Arnaud, Franciscan. What it is necessary to admire there, it is the constant union of a perfect simplicity and a big mental balance with the most ardent passion for the Christ and deepest contempt for oneself.

Biography: Louis LECLÈVE, Saint Angèle of Foligno, Pawn, 1936, 244 pages,. Work: The Book of the experience of the True Supporters, Latin text with French translation of M.J. IRON-SHOD, Droz, 1927, 534 pages.

THE SPOLIATION

Him I was given to look for that she/it was the way of the Cross, to be able to hold me to the feet of the Cross, shelter of all sinners. And her I was taught, illuminated and presented, the way of the Cross, of the following manner. Him I was inspired that, if I wanted to go to the Cross, I had to strip myself to be lighter, and to go high cloud to her, that means to forgive to all those that had offended me and to strip me of all the terrestrial: of all men and all women, of all my friends and parents and of all others, my goods and myself; to give my heart to the Christ who had granted me the aforementioned kindness and to leave by the spiny way of the tribulation. I began then to undo me of what of better had in my clothes, in my food and in my hairdressing. I was yet ashamed and of pain, because I didn't feel the love again and that I lived with my husband. As I of the bitterness felt when one told me some hurtful words or that one caused me some wrong; however, I supported with patience, as much as I was able to it. However he/it arrived that, according to God's will, my mother, who was for me a big obstacle, died; and died then, in a short time, my husband and all my sons.

THE LOVE OF CRUCIFIED IT

While I was in prayer, quite awakened, the Christ me appeared more clearly on the Cross, that means that he/it gave me a better knowledge of him. Then he/it called me and tells me to put my mouth on the wound on his/her/its side. He/it seemed me that I saw to sink his/her/its blood all cool on his/her/its side and that I drank it. And gave me to Him to understand that it was in his/her/its blood that he/it purified me. Then I began to feel a big joy, in spite of the sadness that I brought the consideration of the Passion. I asked the Lord to make me spill all my blood for his/her/its love, as he/it had made it for me; me resolute, for his/her/its love, to want that all my members endure another death that his in his/her/its Passion, a viler death. I thought, in my desire, that if I could find someone to kill me, so long as he/it had taken the liberty to let kill me for the faith and for the Christ's love, I would ask him to grant me this grace; since the Christ was crucified on wood, to crucify me on some strand, in the vilest place, on the vilest instrument. And since I was not worthy to die as had died the saints, that one made me die more shamefully and of slow death. I didn't manage to imagine a death as vile that I wanted it; on the contrary I suffered briskly from not can invent a vile death, by which I would not be in anything similar to the saints; because I was not worthy of it.

THE MYSTICAL CERTAINTY

Jétais to vespers and I looked at the Cross; and, while I looked at eyes of the body Crucified it, suddenly my soul was inflamed of love and all members of my body felt an immense joy. I saw and I felt the Christ that, inside of me, embraced my soul with this arm that undergoes the crucifixion. It happened to this instant or shortly after. I was delighted in a joy and a certainty bigger than usually. And since, my soul remained in this joy, thanks to which it understands how this Man, the Christ, is held in the sky, how we see this flesh that is ours to make one society only with God. It is there for the soul an a lot softer enjoyment than one cannot write it or tell it. Of this continuous joy I have such a security that, even though all words that we wrote were false, he/it would not subsist in me absolutely any doubt about God, because this state is very certainly of It. I have God one so big certainty that even though all men told to me that me in to doubt then, I would not believe them. I now wonder while recalling me the time where I looked for the certainty, where I doubted; but now he/it can have there in me no doubt concerning God's certainty. And I am delighted with to see this hand that he/it will show to me, with the traces of the nails, thus when he/it will say: & laquo has the one that suffered for you & raquo.

The joy that the soul doesn't find here can itself by no means to tell itself/themselves. Currently, he/it is quite impossible to me to feel some sadness of the passion; I find my delights on the contrary to see this Man, to approach me of him. All my joy is henceforth in this suffering God-Man. Sometimes, he/it seems to my soul, - with what joy and what enjoyment! - that she/it enters in the Christ's side, and it is with such a joy that she/it penetrates in the Christ's side that it is impossible to say or to tell. Also, when one represented the Passion on the place Saint-Marie, and that it was, he/it seems, the moment to cry, I was on the contrary miraculously attached and charmed by a joy so strong that I lost the speech; as soon as I had begun to taste God's inexpressible feeling, I fell on the ground. I endeavored then to separate me of the crowd and I watched like a miraculous grace of can have moved away me a little. Extended on soil, I had lost the use of the speech and members. He/it seemed me that my soul entered deeply in the Christ's side. And I didn't feel hopeless sadness, but a feeling of joy so big that one cannot express it. However, before the aforementioned events, we had often cried, my companion and me, because 'I wanted a big desire not to be deceived, to know that I was not deceived. I thought: "So only I could know that I am not deceived! All is there for me. & raquo And now, I am in such a certainty that I don't doubt anymore and that me then more to doubt.

THREE SORTS OF PRAYER

In the name of our Lord Jesus suffering Christ. Amen. It is in the prayer that one finds God. There are three schools, or, rather, three parts of the prayer, outside of which one doesn't find God. The prayer is indeed bodily, mental or supernatural. The bodily prayer is the one that uses resonant words and exercises of the body, as the genuflexions. Celle-Ià, I never abandon it. When I wanted to exercise me to the mental prayer, I let myself surprise sometimes by the laziness or the sleep, and I wasted my time; also I exercise myself to the bodily prayer. It is her that drives to the mental prayer. She/it must be led with attention. When you say the Lord Prayer, make sure to what you say and doesn't preoccupy you to say a certain number, like these good women who make gainful tasks, of it.

The mental prayer, when God's meditation occupies the mind that one thinks about nothing safe to God so. So quelqu57; other thought enters in the mind, I don't call this mental prayer. Such a prayer has the use of the language lost, because it doesn't permit to speak anymore. The mind is entire full of God, so that it cannot be occupied more, in thought like in words, that of God or that who concern God. It is this mental prayer that leads to the supernatural. I call supernatural the prayer that, by the divine favor and the meditation, raise the soul so high that she/it makes higher herself/itself as above his/her/its own nature, and understands better God that she/it is not able to it by his/her/its own nature, and knows that that she/it cannot understand. And what she/it understands, she/it cannot explain it, because more or less everything that she/it sees and everything that she/it feels passes its own nature. It is in these three schools of prayer that one knows that one is and what is God. Of this knowledge one comes to the love, and more one likes, more one wants to possess the one that one likes. And has the sign of the real love: the one that likes turns into the beloved, not partially, but completely. As this transformation is not continuous, nor definitive, the soul is seized of the desire to look for, by all means, to turn into the will of the beloved, in order to return again to the vision. She/it looks for what The one likes that she/it likes. God the Father drew us the way by the beloved, that means by his/her/its Son, that he made son of poverty, the pain, the opprobrium and the real obedience.

GOD'S SEVEN GRANTS

THE ONE that will be able to have gotten in perfection God's very soft grants must know that he/it is consumed and perfect in the very soft Lord Jesus Christ, and that he/it became this same very soft Lord Jesus Christ by the transformation. And more in these grants he/it will progress, more will grow in him being the very soft Jesus
.
The first grant is the love of poverty by which the soul strips itself of the love of all creature, so that it doesn't want anything to possess if it is not Our Lord Jesus Christ, that it doesn't hope in this life for the help of no creature, and the shows by his/her/its works.

The second grant is the desire to be despised, disparaged and covered of opprobriums by all creature, and the will that all creature judges of it to him worthy, so that no one has compassion of her and that she wants to live in the heart of no one, if it is not of only God, and to be held finally for nothing in whatever it is.

The third grant is the desire to be bruised, afflicted and flooded by all pains of the heart and the body of our soft Lord Jesus Christ and his/her/its very soft Mother, souhaitantque all creatures make him undergo these pains without any rest. And if one cannot want these three things, that one knows that one is very far from the very soft resemblance of the Christ blessed, because these three desires of the pain, of poverty, of the lowering came with it in pleased to them perfect expression, in all place, in all time and in all action; and of the same way they came with his/her/its mother.The fourth grant, for all person, it is to be known unworthy of one so big good and incapable to possess it by oneself, and that more one has some, less one seems to have some, because the one that has less the beloved thing loses the love. That one doesn't imagine to have arrived ever, but that one always looks at itself like an early, that didn't make anything until there, nor nothing possessed of all it.

The fifth grant consists in endeavoring to have constantly to the mind the manner of which these desires were in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to shout to the Lord, by a continual sigh, to give us and to put in our heart these desires that were his/her/its clothes and his/her/its mates. It is in this perfect transformation that one must put the whole joy of this life. It is necessary to endeavor to rise as far as conceiving how the Heart of the very soft Jesus was filled some and overflowing, infinitely more that it didn't demonstrate it in his/her/its body.

The sixth grant is to flee as the worse of the pestilences everything that opposes the possession of these desires, that it is carnal or spiritual person; to have in horror, to avoid and to despise like a snake everything that, in this life, seem different or opposite to him.

The seventh grant is not to carry a judgment on any creature and of not himself embarrasserde to judge the other, as well as the gospel said it. But he/it is right to believe itself/themselves viler than all mean and unworthy of God's help.

And because one is again weak and incapable to serve God without hope of reward, that one knows well that it is it that deserves to possess God fully in Homeland and even to see itself/themselves the soul transformed entire in God. And it is so true that, even in this life, God greatly confers this transformation to the soul that reproduces in her his/her/its lowerings, his/her/its deprivations and his/her/its sufferings. However, the soul must search for in this life to want these divine consolations nor, unless it is to comfort his/her/its weakness. She/it must only search for the Christ's perfect crucifixion, painful, poor and despised. Texts translated of Latin by Ivan Gobry

Hubertin of Casale 1259-1338

The name of Hubertin of Casale is bound to the most laborious quarrels that agitated the order of the Minor brothers. Disciple of the blissful Conrad of Offida, who had been the intimate of the brother Léon, he/it received him the devotion of the first Franciscans for the ideal of the holy Poverty. Because of the intransigence of his/her/its views and the violence of his/her/its character, he/it was chosen for chief by the spiritual of Tuscany. One called spiritual the Minor brothers that, refusing the definitive Rule of the order - and especially since 1260, the constitutions written by Bonaventure saint pretended that the only law was the Will of François saint. In love of a very high ideal of poverty, they made otherwise intolerable by their exactions. This is how the propaganda of Hubertin against his/her/its superior and against the Pope, was worth him to be exiled on the Alverne. It is on this rock so rich of memories that he/it wrote, during the summer of 1305, his/her/its Tree of Life crucified of Jesus, one of the most admirable advocacies for the Franciscan ideal and one of the most distressing pamphlets for the charity. In 1317, Hubertin was untied of its wishes towards an Order that he overwhelmed so many accusations: he/it passed then to the Cistercian and finally died among the Carthusians.

TO GET THE GRACE OF POVERTY

My soft Lord, merciful Jesus, have mercy of me and of lady Poverty, because the love that I have for it is in the anguish, and me then to taste rest without it. You know, Lord, if I like it; however has that she/it is sadly seated, embossed of all, similar to a widow. The sovereign of all peoples is held for vile and abject; the queen of all virtues is seated on manure and complains about what all his/her/its friends disdained it and surrendered his/her/its enemies, of that that those same that married it for a long time violent the sworn faith. Remember, Lord Jesus, that you descended here below of the stay of the angels to make of this queen your wife and to have her, in her and by her, of the sons that were perfected. Remember the fidelity of his/her/its attachment: your soul had just united hardly to your body in the heart of the Virgin and had just begun already his/her/its tender cares. To your birth, she/it received you in the stall and in the manger and, coming with you all along life, she/it deprived you if well of all things that she/it took care that you didn't even take where to rest the head.When you began the war of our Redemption, she/it came to become attached to you like a faithful rider, she/it was held at your sides to the strongest of the fight and didn't retire when your disciples took the flight or disowned your name. Finally, while your mother, who followed you until the tip of the less and took his/her/its part of all your pains, while such a mother because of the height of the Cross could not reach anymore until you; at the moment Mrs. Poverty kissed you more closely than ever and associated to your crucifixion with a biting ardor. She/it not wanted only your Cross was worked with care, nor that the nails were in number being sufficient, worked and polite; but she/it only prepared three of them, she/it made them hard and coarse to aggravate your torment better. And while you would die of thirst, this supporter marries had care that one refused you a little water and, assisted of impious satellites, she prepared you a beverage so bitter that you must limit yourselves to dampen your lips of it.

It was therefore in this wife's narrow embrassements that you expired, and it is her more that returned you the last duties, looking jealously after what you didn't have anything to you, nor sepulcher, nor ointment, nor shroud, so that one owed all to borrow. She/it met to your Resurrection and, while au middle of his/her/its embrassements, you took life gloriously, she/it took care to make let you in the sepulcher everything that had been lent you. She/it went up to the Sky with you, and you confided him the seal of Kingdom of the Heaven, of which must be marked the elected anxious to follow the trails of the perfection. Oh! who would not like lady therefore over it Poverty all things! It is why I ask you in your name, oh very poor Jesus, as special and perpetual privilege, to give us, to me and to mine, the grace not to possess anything in essence under the sky, and to have never, so much that we will be under this miserable flesh, that a poor use of the another's property. Translates of Latin by Maurice Beaufreton

Beginning of the XIVe century
Jean of Calvoli

This Minor brother, native of Calvoli, village situated close to San Geminiano, in Tuscany and, maybe, (but nothing is less sure) disciple of Bonaventure saint, is hardly known only of name. On the other hand, his/her/its work acquired a celebrity that only Christ's imitation could dispute him. It is about the Meditations on the Christ's Life, written for a clarisse, and assigned until the end of the last century to the Doctor Séraphique. However only the inspiration, that means the devotion to the Christ's humanity, could permit such an assignment; because the external criterias cannot allow it, and the internal criterias oppose themselves of it: the familiar style of the Meditations doesn't have anything of the nobility - or of the pomposity - of Bonaventure saint, and the unbalance of the parts doesn't look not at all like the scholastic rigor of his/her/its composition. We have there an author who is more an imaginative that an intellectual, and more a director that a professor. It is probably this simplicity that allowed to the Meditations an as large diffusion. She/it inspires the whole spiritual literature of the two following centuries and notably the famous Life of the Christ of Ludolphe the Carthusian, whose reading gave the taste of the conversion to Ignace of Loyola. The work constantly refers to Bernard saint, to which it often borrows some entières.66;Bibliographie pages: Meditations on the Christ's Life, say Bonaventure saint, French translation, introduction and notes of abbot PAUL BAYART, Ed. Franciscans, 1958, 318 pages.

ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION

Once, the Lord Jesus had surrendered home of Marthe and Marie. They liked it of all their heart; they received it with respect and readiness. Marthe, eldest sister of Marie, immediately started preparing for him and for the disciples a meal worthy of them. Marie, however, took place to the feet of the Lord. The Lord, who didn't want to take rest, told to him, according to his/her/its custom, words of the eternal life. Marie, applied to see it and to hear it, found to this interview, an inexpressible joy that made him forget the whole remained...

Look well at the Lord that between, and them that welcome it so joyously; then everything that we described. All it is very beautiful. But you must know that by these two sisters are represented, tell us the saints, two lives,: the active and the contemplative. It is a topic that would require ample developments. I don't believe that he/it is useful to you to have some of long treaties; but I want at least to transcribe you some remarks. Saint Bernard speaks of it abundantly in several places. What he/it says some is very useful, very profitable and quite necessary. Because we live this double life continually and we often ignore how we must include ourselves of it. It is there a big danger and a big risk, especially for those that kissed the religious profession. The active life is designated by Marthe. But there is, according to that that me then to collect words of Bernard saint, two parts in the active life. In the first part one exercises itself mainly to what concerns the personal advantage: one corrects itself and one gets rid of his/her/its shortcomingses, one forms itself to the virtue; and it serves to the neighbor's profit as secondarily by the means of the works of justice, piety and charity. The second part of this life consists in dedicating itself/themselves mainly to his/her/its neighbor's good, as while withdrawing for oneself an increase of merit; as when one directs the other, or that one teaches, or that one works to the salute of the souls; makes the superior thus, preachers and other. Between these two parts of the active life the contemplative life is.

We have the following order therefore:

First: one exercises itself to the prayer, to the survey of the holy Letters, to the practice of the good and the charity in the ordinary stocks; one corrects itself of these vices and one acquires some virtues.

Secondly: one takes a rest in the contemplation, while looking for the solitude of the soul and while taking care the most possible of only God.

Third: when these two sorts of exercises made penetrate in the soul the virtue, illuminated it of the true wisdom and returned it fervid, one applies to the neighbor's salute. It is necessary therefore, as I have just indicated it, that left from life in the first activates the soul gets rid, purify himself and fortifies itself by the exercise of the virtues; then, in the contemplation, that she/it forms herself/itself, lighten, learns; then she/it can go in confidence to help itself/themselves the other of it towards their advantage...

You must know that there are three kinds of contemplations: two main, for the perfect, and a third for the imperfects.

For the perfect: the contemplation of God's majesty and the contemplation of the celestial Court.

For the early and the imperfects, the contemplation of the Christ's humanity. It is her that I describe you in my work. It is by her that you must begin, if you want to go up higher. Otherwise, instead of bringing up you could collapse. See therefore how much is you necessary the doctrine of my work. Don't hope can ever raise you in mind until God's sublimity, if you don't make a long and attentive exercise of this doctrine first...For what concerns the contemplation of the Christ's humanity, you must know that this contemplation doesn't require that life activates precedes it. Indeed, she/it has for object of the things corporelIes, that means the Christ's actions according to his/her/its humanity. As is she/it proposed, as easier, not only to the most perfect, but even to least advanced. Besides this contemplation leads us, as the active life, to purify us of our vices and to fill us of the virtues. She/it agrees therefore well with the active life. Therefore, when one says that the active life must precede the contemplation, it must get along of two superior degrees, contemplation of the celestial court and God's majesty, reserved to the perfect. Also the lower degree, that has for object the Christ's humanity, he/it must to be called meditation better that contemplation... After having seen the exercise of the two lives, that means the first left of the active life, and of the contemplative life, as well as the kinds of contemplation, he/it remains to see what conduct us have to hold in order to be able to enter more easily and more efficiently to maintain us in one and the other.

You must know therefore that the first left from the active life requires the brotherly community, as the contemplation requires the solitude. In the active life, it is necessary to mingle with others, because so one arrives better and more quickly to the goal. In the middle of the other one blushes of the vices that one has and of the virtues that one doesn't have; one corrects itself then on these colons; what doesn't arrive in the solitude, since one doesn't find opportunity there to examine itself/themselves nor no one that corrects us or before that one has to blush. One takes advantage of the corrections and the examples of the other, when one is in community; one tries to avoid the shortcomingses for that are blamed the other or that spoil them, to acquire the virtues that are signalled in the other and that decorate them. So must make yourselves so much that you will be in the active life. Observe carefully, to avoid them, your own vices and those of the other, according to what we already explained several times, especially about the exercise of the active life. Consider with care that that we say the virtues and vices there, and apply yourselves to live according to these teachings. See how you must examine yourselves, to imitate the virtues that you find to others, to humiliate you and to stay in the fear, because of what these virtues miss you...

In the contemplative life, it is necessary to live a manner quite different. The one that doesn't contemplate must take care that of God; he/it must stay in the solitude, at least in the one of the soul, of which one spoke you about the fasting of the Lord. He/it doesn't have to think of the business, nor common, nor clean. He/it doesn't have to think of the neighbor, at least for what concerns the bodily services in given one time. It is by the prayer, the devotion, the compassion that he/it works for the other. He/it doesn't have to wonder either to himself. He/it owes all to reject behind him, of a brief movement, to be like insensible and dead in order to be able to take care of only God, except when a duty obliges it to embarrass itself/themselves of something else. He/it must learn this wisdom in rest, as one told it to you higher. He/it must deliver himself/itself less to the outside activity. He/it must be quiet to Marie's example. Every time and some strongly that one challenges it, that he/it lets, as her, the Lord to answer and to act. That he/it confides all in his/her/its very good Providence...

You see that the contemplative, whose role is especially to be zealous for the Lord, surpass assets in love of God. But hear it with discretion. The contemplative never disregards the neighbor's love. He/it has God for main goal, the neighbor for secondary goal; but in it nothing absolute. The one that is even inept, that begins to contemplate must, as strictly as possible, to take care only of only God, to stay in the solitude of the soul and, if he/it can happen, in the one of the body; even to the risk to appear, by dint of being interested in God, to lose interest of the service due to God, to oneself and to the neighbor

The nature of the solitude wants it thus; especially when one enjoys visits repeated of the spouse.Otherwise, one would lose this favor easily. When one is established better and more elevated by a long exercise of the contemplation, then one is taken of an ardent goodwill for God and for the salute of the souls. However, when he/it required urgent there, all contemplative, even early, interrupts his/her/its rest by love of the neighbor... Now, which of the two lives has the more of merits, God knows it. I would yet believe that the one that is propelled by more of love has more merit. However, it is in the contemplative life that one feels the more of love. It is a big thing that to contemplate God, to live with him, to know his/her/its will. And all it is the sharing of the contemplative. It is the foretaste, imperfect probably and granted rarely, of the reward that one savors in homeland. The saints, seem me him, are also of opinion that the contemplative life has more of merit that the active. However that may be, the Lord wants one and the other. The numerous members that form a same body don't have all same act. Thus, us that are numerous in the church, we have to serve God in numerous manners. All don't receive an identical mind; but to one the speech of wisdom..., etc... Therefore that each stays in the vocation where he/it has been called. That the one that is capable to the contemplation, stop himself of it; that the one that is capable to the neighbor's service delivers itself of it. The Lord who told Marie that she/it had chosen the best part, commanded Pierre to prove him his/her/its love while grazing his/her/its sheep, and by three times he/it summoned him his/her/its orders... For you, since your state requires it, kiss all your strengths the contemplative life after you are exercised first to the active reform of your customs, that gives access to the contemplation. Rejoice yourselves and thank the Lord Jesus of that that he/it called you to this part that he/it told to be the best.

On several occasions we said that the contemplative must dedicate itself to only God and let of side the whole remains. But know well that it is as a rule true, but no in any case. For three motives One must leave one moment the joys of the contemplation and must come back to the active life.

The first motive is the a lot of souls... Knowing his/her/its Spouse's will, that wants the salute of the souls therefore, the wife takes one moment, as much as he is necessary to work to this salut.Puis she returns to the contemplation.

A second motive to interrupt the contemplation, it is the obligation of a duty to fill. When a superior must provide to the needs of those that are confided to him, he lets of side the contemplation...

The third motive to interrupt the contemplation, it is the departure, to which it is necessary to expect, of the spouse, and the withdrawal of the consolations that the soul felt.

The spouse, indeed, leave and comes back when he/it wants; you already saw it. When he/it retires, the soul languishes of desire; of all your strengths, it reminds it while saying with the wife of the Hymns: & laquo Comes back, my Beloved! "If he/it lingers to come back, she/it calls to her/its help the spouse's mates, who is the holy angels: & laquo I implore of it to you, oh girls of Jerusalem, if you see my beloved, tell to him that I languish of love Him. In spite of all he/it doesn't condescend so to come back, the soul must consist of the spouse's will and must postpone to the active life, where, at least, it will produce some fruits for the spouse. The contemplative must not be lazy. The wife says then: "Surround me with flowers, surround me of fruits; because I languish of love "...Such are therefore the three motives for which the contemplative moves away of the joys of the contemplation and takes the active life; in spite of him however, and because God has some thus. By the exposition of each of these motives, you could notice that one only moves away for one time and that always one comes back to the contemplation. We see there a new proof of the superiority of the contemplative life on the active life. Translates of Latin by abbot Paul Bayart

The Fiorettis second half of the XIVe centuryThe Fiorettis, or Florilège, is the Franciscan work that knew the most indisputable success. He/it counts some translations in all languages, of which ten at least in ours. It is yet only a belated compilation, operated by an anonymous hand, that transcribed in Italian the most meaningful passages of previous Latin texts. The main reference of the Fiorettis is a compilation, due especially in Hugolin of Monte Giorgio, the Acts of the blissful François and his/her/its Mates; but the author drew to other sources: the writings of the brother Léon, of Celano, of Bonaventure saint. The work is constituted for half of the actual Fiorettis, that include fifty-three chapters to which are added the Considerations on the stigmata, the Life of the brother Juniper, the Life of the blissful Gilles, the Subjects of the blissful Gilles, and of the additional Chapters.The author of the Franciscan Florilège solicited the primitive texts obviously and didn't seem to worry not at all about the liberties that he takes with history. Yet, the narration possesses such a charm, and the author's imagination is so in conformity with the Franciscan mind, that we are in front of an authentic testimony; because this historically unfaithful painting, thanks to his/her/its art, restores us the truth more faithfully than history herself.

Biography: Fioretti of Saint François of foundation, complete edition, French translation, introduction and notes of Alexander MASSERON, Franciscan Editions, I 953, 5 IO pages.

OF THE BROTHER BERNARD OF QUINTAVALLE

What grace often grants God to the evangelical poor people who abandon the world for the Christ's love, one sees it by the example of the brother Bernard of Quintavalle that, after it had taken the dress of François saint, was very often delighted in God by the contemplation of the celestial things. It occurred once among others, that being at the church to hear the Mass, the mind quite suspended in God, he/it became so absorbed and delighted in contemplation that to the moment of the elevation of the Christ's Body he/it didn't notice anything, he/it didn't kneel, he/it didn't withdraw his/its hood as the other helpers made it, but without propelling the eyes, the stationary look, he/it stayed insensible of the morning until None.

After None, he/it came back to him and he/it went by the convent, crying with admiration,: "Oh brothers! Oh brothers! Oh brothers! he/it is not of man, in this country, so big and so noble that, if he/it was promised him a very beautiful palace of gold, he/it was not pleasant to him to wear a bag full of manure to win one so noble treasure. "To this celestial treasure, promised the men who like God, the aforementioned brother Bernard was raised in mind to such point that, during fifteen continuous years, he always went while raising his/her/its thought and his/her/its face skywards. And during this time, ever to table he/it doesn't appease his/its hunger, although he/it ate a little what was put before him; because he/it said that the man doesn't make perfect abstinence while going without from what he doesn't taste, but that the real abstinence consists in using with temperance of the things pleasant to the taste. And besides, he/it arrived again to such a clarity and light of intelligence that even the big clerks resorted to him to have the solution of the arduous problems and dark passages of the writing; and he/it illuminated them on all difficulty.And because his/her/its mind was detached completely and absent-minded of the terrestrial things, it flew as the swallows while flying very loud by the contemplation; also it remained sometimes twenty days, sometimes thirty days, on the summits of the highest mountains, contemplating the celestial things. It is why brother Gilles told it that he was not granted to the other men, this grant that was granted to brother Bernard of Quintavalle, the grant to eat while flying as the swallows. And because of this eminent grace that he/it received God, holy François conversed gladly and often with him, of day and night; also they were sometimes found together, delight all night long in God, in the wood where they had met to converse of God. Which is blessed in the centuries of the centuries. Amen.

OF THE BROTHER JEAN OF THE ALVERNE

AMONG the other wise and holy brothers and sons of François saint, that, according to Salomon's speech, are the Father's glory, there was nowadays in the so-called province of the Marche the venerable and holy brother Jean of Fermo, who was also called brother Jean of the Alverne, because of the long time that he/it stayed in the holy place of the Alverne, where he/it passed of this life; because he/it was man of exemplary life and big holiness. This brother Jean, whereas he/it was child and in the century, wanted all his/her/its heart the life of penitence that keeps the purity of the soul and the body; it is why, being again very small, he/it began to carry the cilice of stitches and the circle of iron on his/her/its flesh and to practice a big abstinence; in particular, when he/it stayed with the canons of Saint Peter of Fermo, that lived gorgeously, he/it escaped the bodily delights and macerated his/her/its body by a very rigorous abstinence.

But, as his/her/its mates opposed themselves a lot of it, removing him his/her/its cilice and preventing various manners his/her/its abstinence, he/it decided, inspired by God, to abandon the world and those that like it, and to offer itself/themselves entire in the arms of Crucified it, under the dress of François saint crucified. And he/it made thus. Having been received therefore in the order all child and confided to the cares of the master of the beginners, he/it became so spiritual and so devout that sometimes, hearing aforesaid master to speak of God, his/her/its heart consumed itself like polishes by fire; and it warmed himself/itself with one so big suavity of grace in the divine love that, capable to remain immobile and to support such a suavity, it rose and, as intoxicated of mind, it started running, soon in the garden, soon in wood, soon in the church, depending on whether the flame and the impetus of the mind pushed it. Then, thereafter of the time, the divine grace made grow of a manner continues this angelic man of virtue in virtue and in celestial grants, and in divine elevations, and in raptures, so that his/her/its soul was sometimes raised to the splendors of the cherubs, sometimes to the ardors of the seraphs, sometimes to the joys of the blesseds, sometimes to the embrassements in love and excessive with the Christ, and this not only by interior spiritual sensations but also by signs formal outsides and by bodily sensations. In particular, the flame of the divine love scorched its heart in an excessive manner once, and this flame lasted well in it three years; in this time it received marvelous consolations and divine visitations, and often it was delighted in God; brief, in this time, it appeared all flaming and burning of the Christ's love. And it happened on the holy mountain of l' Alverne.

But because God takes a care soon all special of his/her/its sons, giving them, according to the diversity of the times, consolation soon, tribulation, soon prosperity, soon adversity, as he sees that he is necessary to them to maintain itself/themselves in humility or to inflame their desire of the celestial things more, he was pleasing to the divine goodness, after these three years, to withdraw of the aforesaid brother Jean this radiance and this flame of the divine love, and she deprived it of all spiritual consolation; by continuation, brother Jean stayed without light and without love of God, all sorry, grief-stricken, aching. And for it, he/it left thus full from anguish through the forest, running çà and there, calling by words, the tears and sighs the beloved spouse of his/her/its soul, who had hidden and had left it, and without the presence of which his/her/its soul found neither peace nor rest; but in no place, in no way, it could not recover the soft Jesus nor come back to his/her/its sweet spiritual sensations of the Christ's love, as it had accustomed. And this tribulation lasted him of the numerous days, during which it persevered continually to cry, to sigh and to ask God to return it by his/her/its mercy the beloved spouse of his/her/its soul. At the end, when he/it was pleasing to God to have felt his/her/its patience enough and flaming his/her/its desire, one day that brother Jean went, in such tribulation and tribulation, through the aforesaid forest, and that he had sat down of weariness, supported to a beech, and that he stayed, the face all bathed of tears, stingy skywards, here it is than all of a sudden Jesus Christ appeared close to him in the trail by which this brother Jean had come, but he didn't say anything.

Brother Jean the seer and thankful well that it was the Christ, immediately threw himself to his/her/its feet, and with excessive whining he/it prayed it very humbly and said: "Rescue me, oh my Lord, because without you, my very soft Savior, I am in darkness and the tears; without you, very soft Lamb, I am in the anguishes and in the fear; without you, Son of the very high God, I am in confusion and in the shame; without you, I am stripped of all good and blinded, because you are Jesus the true light of the souls; without you, I am lost and damned, because you are the life of the souls and the life of lives; without you, I am sterile and arid, because you are the source of all grant and all grace; without you, I am quite distressed, because you are Jesus our redemption, our love, our desire, bread that comforts and wine that rejoices the choirs of the angels and the hearts of all Saints. Illuminate me, very gracious master and very pathetic pastor, because I am, although unworthy, your small sheep & raquo. But because the desire of the holy men, that God defers to grant, inflame them to bigger love and merit, the Christ blessed part without granting it and without him nothing to say, and he leaves by aforesaid trail.Then brother Jean rises and short behind him, and throws himself again to his/her/its feet, and with a holy importunity keeps it, and with very religious tears prays it and says: & laquo OH very soft Jesus, have mercy of me in my tribulation; grant me by the abundance of your mercy and by the truth of your pathetic looks, because the whole earth is full of your mercy." And the Christ leaves again, and doesn't say him anything, and doesn't give him any consolation; and he acts like a mother with his/her/its small child, when she makes him want the breast, and makes it come behind her while crying, so that he takes it then more gladly. Then brother Jean, with bigger devotion again and bigger desire, follows the Christ; and when he/it joined it, the Christ blessed turns around toward him and watches it with a face full of rejoicing and 'of grace and, opening his/her/its very holy and merciful arms, kiss it very tenderly. And as he/it opened the arms, brother Jean lives to come out of the very holy chest of the Savior of marvelous rays of light, that illuminated the whole wood and himself" in his/her/its soul and in his/her/its body. Brother Jean knelt then to the Christ's feet; and Jesus blessed stretched him with benignity his/her/its foot to kiss, in the same manner that in the Magdeleine; and brother Jean, taking it with an extreme respect, bathed it of so many tears as he appeared indeed another Magdeleine, and he said religiously: & laquo I pray you, my Lord, not to watch to my sins, but by your very holy Passion and by the effusion of your precious Blood, to revive my soul in the grace of your love, since it is your command that we liked you of all our heart and all our affection, command that no one can accomplish without your help. Help me therefore, very magnet Son of God, so that I like you of all my heart and all my strengths."And as brother Jean stayed thus to Jesus' feet, pronouncing these words, he was granted by him and regained him the first grace, that means the one of the flame of the divine love, and he felt renewed quite and comforted; and sentient that the grant of the divine grace had come back from it him, it began to return thanks to the Christ blessed and to kiss his/her/its feet religiously. And then, as he/it straightened himself/itself to look at the Savior in the face, the Christ stretched him and offered him his/her/its very holy hands to kiss; and after brother Jean had kissed them, he approached to the touch of Jesus' chest, and he hugged and kissed this very sacred chest, and equally the Christ hugged it and kissed it. And in this embrace and his/her/its kissings, brother Jean felt an odor so divine that if all aromatics and all fragrant things of the world had been united together, they had appeared a stink in comparison of this odor; and brother Jean was delighted then quite in her, and comforted, and illuminated, and this odor lasted several months in his/her/its soul. And henceforth the marvelous and celestial words, that transformed the hearts of that heard them came out of his/her/its mouth, watered to the fountain of the divine wisdom in the chest consecrated of the Savior, and made big fruit in the souls. And in the trail of wood, where landed the feet blessed of the Christ, and far around, brother Jean always felt this odor and saw this splendor, when he went there a long time after. Brother Jean, coming back then to him after this rapture, and whereas the Christ's bodily presence had disappeared, stayed so illuminated in the soul, if damaged in his/her/its divinity that, although it was not a literate man by the human survey, it knew to solve nevertheless and to explain the questions the subtlest and highest on the divine Trinidad, and the deep mysteries of the holy Ecriture.Et a lot of times then, talking in presence of the Pope and cardinals, of the kings, the barons, the masters and the doctors, it put them all in big stupor by the high words and the deep sentences that it said. To the Christ's praise. Amen Translates of Italian by Alexander Masseron

XVe. - XVIe CENTURIES Saint Catherine of Bologna 1413-1463

Elevated to the Court of Ferrare, Catherine Vigri entered to nineteen years in the order of Claire saint; she was put in charge of founding a monastery of Clarisses of which she became the abbess, after having filled the office of mistress of the beginners. She/it was canonized in 1712. Saint Catherine composed for the nuns of his/her/its monastery a mid-autobiographic work, mid-didactics,: The Weapons necessary to the spiritual Fight. She/it tells there, to the third person, the terrifying temptations of which she/it was overwhelmed during long years, as well as the exceptional graces that followed, and she/it pulls a lesson of prudence of it and trustworthy in the divine mercy. This book, written in a simple language, knew in all the Italy, during the centuries that followed his/her/its release, an exceptional success.

Biography: J. STIÉNON OF THE MEADOW, Saint Catherine of Bologna, Desclée Of Brower (The Islands), 234 pages.

THE CONDITIONS OF THE SACRAMENTAL COMMUNION

Since a certain time, the sister had a very serious temptation of incredulity with regard to the Christ's Sacrament: she/it questioned the dedicated host. Very afflicted because of it, and finding no remedy nor in the confession, nor by no other means, she/it nearly called continually God with a big pain and the bitter tears. When approached the time where she/it had to receive communion, the temptation grew again more, because it made it with so much callousness that, in all, it didn't have any taste to the devotion. A certain time that she/it had received communion, she/it kept such a callousness while the struggle grew that, as intoxicated of pain, it remained inside retired of herself; on the knees in the church among the other sisters, as it is of use after the communion, his/her/its heart was if afflicted that soon it rose on her/its feet, spread soon on the ground, not being conscious of herself anymore, and not finding place, nor rest.But the sweetness of the very high God, master of the battle and the pain, prepared the victory and the cooling again. One morning early, she/it was in this church and was held in prayer. God visited his mind and, talking with her he gave him the clear knowledge mentally, that, in the host dedicated by the priest, are the whole divinity and our God's humanity indeed. And he/it was shown to him how and how he/it was possible that, under this frail appearance of bread, there are entire God and the entire man. He/it gave him knowledge of everything that touches the faith in this Sacrament briefly, dissipating the fights and the doubts that she/it had had and that she/it could have in the future, solving them thanks to beautiful and natural examples. Besides it, he/it showed to him how the person who receives communion without sensitive devotion must not stop for it receiving the grace of the sacrament, so long as she has the pure conscience, and even though she is tempted in mind against the faith (or of another temptation) - provided that she is not in agreement; he showed to him that the merit of the soul that receives communion in these fights as supporting with patience her rages of the mind is bigger than the merit of the one that receives communion with big sweetness and suavity. He/it was shown to him again how and how he/it was possible that Christ God's Son had been embodied of the Holy spirit and born of the Virgin Marie, without corruption and without attack to his/her/its very holy and his/her/its very pure virginity. He/it was clearly given him to know with certainty and to consist of the very high Trinidad, and a lot of other important things that I pass by absence of memory, and also by impotence.

All these things were shown him that morning. Because of it his/her/its soul remained all comforted and private of the temptation of which I spoke, as if it had never felt it. Besides, the first time that she/it received communion, after having received in the mouth the holy host, she/it felt and tasted the suavity of the very pure flesh of the immaculate lamb, Christ. This feeling and this flavor were of such a sweetness that she/it could not tell it, nor to give no picture that was comprehensible of it. Then indeed she/it could say: "My heart and my flesh exult in the living God ". So that next his/her/its soul stayed comforted unspeakably and his/her/its mind if consolidated in the holy faith in this Sacrament that if all creatures had preached him against him, she/it would not have been shaken in her/its position. It is why the sadness that it had carried before turned into joy, so much so that for nothing on earth, while considering the utility and the consolation that it had received some, it would not have liked have been deprived of this temptation. It is therefore rightfully that the big herald, holy Paul, said,& laquo If we were the mates of his/her/its Passion, us he/it will also be of his/her/its consolation. He had one so big and so inexhaustible desire to receive communion often, that she/it felt a big pain and a big pain not to be able to make it, so that once or the other, being because of it in abundant and soft tears, so that he/it appeared to come out of his/her/its eyes two abundant liquid streams, she/it felt to this moment his/her/its soul to receive communion truly to the goodness of the divine Providence: it arrived of an unspeakable and incomprehensible way, for the praise of the Christ Jésus, and for the consolation of these new tears; these didn't yet stop, before the revelation of this if ineffable, so incomprehensible Sacrament. If it happens thus to from it, it is because our perishable ignorance is not capable to scrutinize this divine, mystery. Thus, very dear sisters, so no such a doubt has not been felt of you, by a divine favor, (surely without his/her/its consent) don't fear, but receive it with faith, him that, by his/her/its infinite love, condescend to come to us. Oh incomprehensible and deep humility of the Christ, that not only stooped to taking our minute and fragile mortality while making itself/themselves obedient until the death, but again in the present, and so much that the world will last, gets used obedient and ready to descend daily every time the sacred words ordered by it are pronounced by the priests, deadly and subject men to the sin! Yet, after one so excellent office, they should be in all saints and celestial!It is why, very dear sisters, don't get tired of asking God for them, so that he/it condescends to sanctify all their feelings; so that, in return for the divine help, they can accomplish what concerns one so incomprehensible sacrament more worthily and treat the Christ's body saintly, Immaculate Lamb, your Spouse full of leniency, Spouse of all chaste and virginal souls... Alas! alas! what big mistake is filled the human heart that wants to be held distant of such a food! My beloved sisters, keep yourselves although the enemy, under the appearances of the humility, doesn't incline you to deprive your souls of one so high merit: the one to receive communion when you can make it decently. Translates of Italian by Ivan Gobry

Henri of Herp says Harphius 1477

Heir of the Rhenish mystical school, Harphius, that is the most famous Franciscan name among the spiritual of the fifteenth century, is especially inspired by Ruysbroeck. He/it wrote three spiritual works: an Epithalame, or commentary of the Hymn of the Hymns, a Mirror of the Perfection and aParadise of the Contemplative; the three treaties were united to the following century under the mystical Theology name. His/her/its doctrine influenced the authors of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries a lot; but some excessiveness of language made it consider like a precursor of the partisans of it & laquo pure love ", among which one counted the quiétistes. Such a relationship was worth him to be registered to the Index.Provincial of Cologne, then guardian of Malines, it died in odor of holiness.

OF THE VERY NOBLE EXERCISE QUADRIFORME OF THE ASPIRATION AND THE UNITIF LOVE

This exercise is the supreme to perfection introduction, because, thanks to his/her/its vigorous impulse, it presses the man to hurry toward the assimilation to God, in a perfect mortification of all vices and the acquirement of all virtues. He/it is the highest cedar on the mountain of perfection and must decorate itself with four branches, that means four exercises. Because this exercise, in his/her/its harassing work, penetrates all temptations and occupations, and all their multiplicity; it even penetrates everything that is below God; so that in one instant, it places in God's stark naked presence the topic that wants to come immediately to it. However, this one must often wait outside that God wants to introduce it. Now therefore, he/it is necessary for those that he/it enlivens the desire to be introduced in the unit of the mind, to learn to knock at his/her/its door of four ways. It is necessary to make sure, with a suspicious fear, to possess someone of these exercises with owner's feeling however well; but, turned toward oneself, it is necessary to consider the appeal of the Holy spirit, that attracts to him the man's mind by various means, and inflame to his/her/its love, now by such exercise, then by such other. When therefore someone senses that he/it is going to be pushed soon by the intimate operation of the Holy spirit, to such exercise, he/it must abandon all feeling of property in the method that he/it chooses, and to follow with a loving and expeditious will the appeal of the mind Saint, while attending to says it exercise in a divine perspective.

But when he/it doesn't find any appeal of the Holy spirit, and that he/it cannot get the passage fully to God, then it is necessary to warm up in presence of God by the aspiration of the love unitif, that contains four fashions of exercises. These are: the offering, the complaint, the conformity, the union.First of all in his/her/its conversation with God, it is necessary to offer everything that the Holy spirit can require by its inspiration generously, especially a perfect abnegation and the contempt of oneself, the detachment of all sensual pleasures by which an inattentive heart can be soiled,: meanness, beautiful trivial words, social life, idleness, lightness, curiosity, and other similar things. One offers itself in the mortification of the natural passions: disorganized joy and sadness, fear, hope and vain love; and in the resignation to be deprived of all sensitive grace, of all et.des devotion various grants of God that are not necessary to the salute. In the same way one offers itself in an expeditious will to support for God all adversity, as well as the loss of the friends, the parents, the temporal goods and honors; to support the illness, the humiliation, the grief, the tribulation and the tearing of the heart...One must also offer itself to God's good pleasure, even though this one wanted for its honor to reserve us to the eternal suffering, and for his/her/its love, to the pains of the hell... When the supporter will have arrived to a perfect resignation, then he will be able to, with a whole confidence, to pass to the second exercise that consists in asking or to want, because the Christ says: Ask and you will receive.

II must, in second place, to ask, and to ask God, not only everything that he has, but again everything that he is. Before all thing, he/it must ask for God's pure love, to enjoy him only in his/her/its immense pure love, because it doesn't suit to the man to enjoy no thing in essence, that means to settle in the supreme rest, unless it is in only God... Next him must ask to God the pure illumination of intelligence, in order to know fully, first and above all, his/her/its divine pleasure to conform itself/themselves fully of it..., then, oneself, that means an abyss of baseness andingratitude, make indignant all good, so that he/it can perfectly humiliate himself/itself and can despise himself. Third he/it will ask for a perfect knowledge of all true virtues, and especially he/it should submit with big goodwill to the prayer, in order to acquire, to receive and to possess these virtues. But overcoat all, so that God's pure love increases from it him, it will be necessary to include this desire in an express way in his/her/its first demand: to enjoy only God only, that means the love incréé, and by him, to make to grow and to multiply in us the created love...

The third exercise consists in this: the faithful

lover works continually to conform more and more in his/her/its beloved. And it, in this way,: when the fire of the love has been lit in its heart, it first must there to burn all dissimilarity: all vices and the shortcomingses, all natural passions and the immortification, all sensual inclinations and the impatience; he/it doesn't yet must this way to examine these dissimilarities one by one, but to take in only one sheaf all these imperfections and to project them in the immense fire of the divine love where they will consume themselves. Will emerge then in him the ardent desire of the déiformité and, by glaring and pressing prayers, he/it will ask to his/her/its beloved to decorate his/her/its soul purified of thevirtues whose Christ is himself decorated. Although he/it wants with tender goodwill toward his/her/its spiritual model: the Christ in all his/her/its perfections - so much in his/her/its divinity that in his/her/its humanity to make similar to him, he/it must however, to get this transformation, to count more on the prayer that on his/her/its own effort; because the virtue and the déiformité get themselves more quickly by the ardor of the regular prayers that by any other exercise; but especially he/it should conform to the Christ's humanity, of all his/her/its virtues that especially shine in his/her/its abandoned, painful and bitter death. And over it all, he/it will want to conform to the Christ in the love of the deep lowering, abjectness and the humility...

The fourth exercise consists in uniting his/her/its will to the good divine pleasure, and to the there to pour; bus as well as the exercise of the aspiration and love unitif is practiced to take a rest in only God and to become, by a flaming desire, one only with it in mind - that to what duct the convenient and experimental love: so in this exercise of union the man must try by a discerning and burning desire to unite his/her/its will so fully (without any interior hesitation) and to pour it so deliberately in God's good pleasure that, by the impetus of the pure love, this good divinepleasure either always his/her/its supreme desire, his/her/its joy and his/her/its consolation in all things - that it is the outside adversities, as the illness, the persecution, the violence, the derision, the confinement, the distresses and other similar things; or the interior adversities as the flight of the devotion or the spiritual consolation, the obscurity of the mind and senses, the cooling of the spiritual affections, the temptation and so forth... Although to this moment the good works and the spiritual exercises are us insipid, they are yet better accepted of God and more deserving for us... that these works that we make in the time of the sensitive devotion, because we serve the Lord then faithfully in spite of the disappearance of our clean good. Translates of Latin by Ivan Gobry o.f.m.

Bse Batista Varani 1458-152

Girl of the duke of Camerino, Camille Varani preferred the pump and the entertainment of the Italian courses a long time to the religious life where God called it intimately. Finally entered at the clarisses, she/it paid for her/its long resistance to the grace of smarting remorse and bitters despairs. But faithful, this time, until the limit the heroism, she/it waited with an in love patience for the end of the obscure night. With thedelivery, came him a narrow intimacy with the Christ, who liked making of her his/her/its confidante, raising it until the summits of the contemplation and the love. One has the blissful Battista a set of spiritual opuscules written of an alert and vigorous feather: The Conduct of the spiritual Life, Jesus' mental Pains, Jesus' Memorial, the Instructions to the Disciple, to which it is necessary to add the letters and prayers. Biography: COUNTESS of RAMBUTEAU, The Blissful Varani, Paris, Ie coffers, 1906, 188 pages.

THE CHRIST'S WARNING

(These words were addressed to the blissful before his/her/its entry in religion).

Remember what God, in his/her/its goodness, made you see clearly: if you didn't sin more ever and if you made to you only a bigger penitence that all together, all blesseds; so by impossible, you didn't pour more tears than he is necessary some to make a sea, and if you supported all pains that it is possible to support, it would not be sufficient to thank me for the smallest of my kindness. Now, imagine how you could balance so many infinite mistakes. Despair yourself therefore, and say: . My Lord, life and sweetness of my heart, since me then to thank you nor while making the well, nor while enduring the pain, how will I satisfy unjustly to so many serious offenses and sins smutty clerks towards you? Give me at least this grace, oh my Jesus, that I write as if I had perpetrated all pain nor accomplished no good. Because it is indeed as well as the things should have been; and give me the grace that this a short time that I have to live, I use it according to your holy will. And after the death send me where am for you biggest honor; and if it was in hell, I will be all happy, because I want your honor, that only must be my glory ".

... Remember you with what ardor you prayed me: Be "expeditious, fast and firm, my Lord, me then more to keep patience: you lingered a lot to give me the suffering that you had promised myself. When will you lead me to these fat grazings of the pain, where fatten themselves your chosen sheep? "Remember when you will be in the torment of the Cross that God wants to give you, that it is not necessary to say ever: "Oh God, why did you abandon me? "Because you know it: he/it forbade you to say it. The reason, you know it. And remember of what he/it told to you: more he/it will seem you that he/it abandoned you, more he/it will be close to you. But I want to treat you in the same way as my Father treated me: I will let you undergo as much pain as your fragility will be able to support some. Remind you what he/it told to you: you will fall in a big mistake. I don't know if it will be deception, temptation or fall. He/it told you not to Conceive some of despair, because it is not thing whose despair must equal the displeasure. Thus, home in the fear and in the humility. Until now, you are stayed with God in big confidence, and even in presumption: also, you have need that one turns the page. As much he/it seemed you to be with him in love and in grace, as much he/it will seem you to be he in hate and in disgust. But goes with strength and constancy, because it is the winners' that one gives the crown. Remind you the royal offering that you made to God: you wanted to serve it, no to avoid the hell, no to win the paradise, but because only he/it is a master worthy to receive all creature love and praise. Make therefore so: not only serve it with devotion until the death, but again until in the certainty of the damnation.Remind you it and be dived in confusion while thinking of his/her/its big goodness, but also to your misery and to your depravity. Disconcerted home of that that, decorated with such iniquities, you have the presumption and the desire to rest in his/her/its soft arms As his/her/its dear wife, whereas you are for him an adulterous and a prostitute. But has what I am the most laborious, and that forces me to cry on your miserable soul: after so many soft embraces, after so many soft words, named wife and girl so often with an inconceivable sweetness; after so many love marks, tried no by words, but by experience; after having felt and tasted how much he/it is, beyond all agreeable, desirable, attractive, delectable, gracious and sweet thing, you returned many and many time like a dog to your vomiting that wants to tell your life first, and even worse. Also, home in the fear, and don't say more ever: "God keeps me of it, I will keep of the rest & raquo. Because God makes you hear clearly that, if he didn't hold you, you would be an ant, exactly good to break you the neck. Never again have confidence in you, even though you returned to such a state of grace that you would make some miracles every day.

Remind you (he/it made it understand you clearly) that you deserve more while holding you before his/her/its majesty without devotion and without tears that when you are held there with a lot of tears and devotion: because during this time you pay for a part of your debit. But when you are there with a lot of tears, you leave with a bigger debit that when you came; teach to have the patience to the days of barrenness and destitution therefore... Remember that God wants you all alone, stark naked on the bed of the Cross. It is in this sacred bed that he/it wants to consume with you this holy marriage, these spiritual nuptials, by the life of love and pain. And you will say with the beloved wife of the Hymn: Him My Beloved is mine and I am his, to him that eats among the lilies & raquo. Yes, he/it satiates himself/itself among the lilies of the big pains, that he/it carried alone, no so that I wait for the utility of a reward of it, but for his/her/its pure love. It is this love for that I hope, before dying, to taste in truth, as he/it has it to me many time promised firmly. To this divine love are praise and glory in the centuries of the centuries. Amen.

PRAYER

Oh God very sweet and very benign Father of the infinite mercies! I am your hundredth stray brebiette, that during three years am me roaming, scattered and vagabond alley, by the bushes and by the plains, of it me nourishing of bitter, poisonous and cruel herbs. Now, oh my soft God, my to stretch Lord, I want all my heart to turn me toward you, real peace fountain! Receive me, and carry me on your helpful shoulders, oh faithful and good Pasteur who delivered your life for your sheep. Carry away me, oh my good Jesus, to the sheepfold of your infinite mercy and your tenderness. Oh my soft Lord, don't permit that I drown in this port so sure of the holy religion, since you so long followed me, since you took so much worry to pull me to the sea agitated of this misleading world. Remember, my Jesus, how much I cost you dear! Remember, pathetic God, of the price for that you paid, for me sinner, to the counter of the painful Cross. Remember, oh my agreeable Redeeming, of what I wanted to make, and not of what I made. I am this publicain that, full of shame, is held from afar, and I don't dare to raise my eyes skywards: I hold the face against earth, striking my chest and saying: & laquo Lord, save the sinner that I follow ". Ah, pathetic Lord, receive in your open arms this prodigal son, who comes back from afar after having dissipated all your goods (and no his) while living in the sin: and now I am not even worthy to be called your slave or your maid, because I wounded the purchased souls. by your precious blood. Attract me to you by your grace, very lenient Father, kiss and hug my soul afflicted in your arms so soft, as you made it to the old days, and visit the abandoned. Give me, my Lord, the kiss of this holy peace that excites my desires, and bring one end to this deadly war that already lasts since three years. And if I don't deserve it by another way, that it is by the one of the death. My soft Lord, withdraw me from this life full of perils; pull me, my God, to darkness of this world; take me of the smelly jail of this miserable body. Attract me toward you, oh pathetic God, attract me toward you; doesn't let me stay more in this exile of the century: I cannot hold there. All repulses me: the infirmities, the demons, the creatures, the interior tribulations; all rejects me while saying: & laquo Goes from it, go from it, it is not anymore time for you to stay HERE. "Receive me, my God, close to you and in you, because I come there so gladly, with one so goodwill, that me then to express it by words. You see it, you know it, my pathetic Lord. Make me known where is your biggest honor until the day of the judgment, so that I don't part eternally with you, real and sovereign Well, as I deserved it. I will impute to you the grace and mercy of it, and I will sing your praises and your glory, oh pathetic God: you that live and reigns in the centuries of the centuries. Amen, Amen, Amen.

THE TIME OF THE TEST

Himself needs some that you can clearly understand in what peace and what tranquillity, in what sweetness and what love, in what intimacy and what familiarity I was at the time of this saint spiritual Jubilee: I was frequently in divine symposia, in the soft arms of the celestial Spouse, in the love and the familiarity of stretching eternal Father. Oh full-time of grace, serenity and appeal, has that you turned for me into storm, in obscurity and in darkness! Oh impenetrable peace that surpasses all sensitive experience, here is that you you are changed in murderous war! Oh ineffable sweetness, here is that you became gall and bitterness! Oh love that delights me the soul, here is that you converted in cruel hate! Oh friendship, oh unthinkable familiarity, here is that you turned for me to the faction and to enmity! Oh very tender arms, dropped me you of such a sublimity in the depths of the hell! Alas! this stroke is too rough! It is not marvel if you broke entire, oh miserable soul! Now, cry; now, sigh and say: "She/it is seated in the sadness, the queen of the nations, and the tears flow on his/her/its cheeks, and him, doesn't have anybody there to comfort it... & raquo That on my fate cries the sky and the earth; that cry on me all spiritual creatures! Cry, oh my very beloved Father, if you don't have a heart of stone, on your daughter inconsolée,: See, and consider... if he/it is a pain similar to my pain. It is there this secret wound that since gets injured so long the c0eur; henceforth, I will show it to you; henceforth, I will discover it to you, because me then more to hide it, me then more to conceal it, heal-Ia, if you can it; otherwise, offer me your compassion: this I will be a cooling. The patience I become impossible, the suffering I am intolerable, I feel my bones to consume itself/themselves of pain; I have the heart saoulé of pain and bitterness. I am held out of myself, like a madwoman; what I tell to myself, what I make, I don't know anything anymore of it. So yet my speech comes to get lost, forgive me, because my motto is this one: & laquo As much she/it was in the delights and the glory, as much she/it will receive torments and tears ". Texts translated of Italian by Ivan Gobry

François of Osuna 1492-1540

Saint Térèse of Avila tells in his/her/its autobiography that she learned to say nothing about prayer thanks to the Third Alphabet book. This work constitutes the most important mystical treaty of the Franciscan indeed Andalusian Francisco of Osuna; it is not yet his/her/its only title of glory, because, outside of one half-a-dozen of Latin works, it wrote in Spanish The gracious Banquet, on the Eucharist; the Norte of Estados los, or Starry polar of the life states! I, that is a curious treaty of conjugal spirituality divided in three parts: the Virgins (before the marriage), the Spouses (during), the Widows (after), finally the six famous Alphabet book. This appellation comes of the somewhat artificial way of which is divided these works, that contain each as many treaties as has letters in the alphabet. The first and the sixth speak of the Christ's Passion, the second of the mortification and virtues, the third of the prayer, the fourth of the love, the fifth of the evangelical poverty,. According to the landed topics, the author is quiet fellow, ardent, mannered, solemn, humorous, to stretch, jolly, offering one of the most varied styles of the spiritual literature thus. Bibliography: P. FIDÈLE OF Rob; The Father François of Osuna, his/her/its life, his/her/its (EUvre, his/her/its doctrine spirituelle,Beauchesne, 1937, 7°4 pages.

THE MYSTICAL TEARSTo

those that take to the contemplation, he/it is easier to cry than to the others people. It is each of the men collected that this speech of the Isaïe prophet addresses: Your light will rise in darkness, and your darkness will be as the day in his/her/its middle; God will always give you the leisure and he will fill your soul of splendors, and he will deliver your bones, and you will be like an irrigated garden, and like a fountain of waters whose waters don't dry up... It is by multiple ways and in multiple reports that those that take to the contemplation pour some tears. Those that are of good early cry to collect itself/themselves internally, because this grant is to them of as much more granted that they are more alone. Those work to get by their tears what they don't believe to deserve by their works. To those that want to collect themselves indeed and of the deepest of the heart, it is sufficient to tell the Lord: & laquo Why you don't give yourself to the poor? You fill the sky and the earth and you let my empty heart...), It is with similar words that those cry intimately that, with all their soul, want to collect themselves in God and separate of all business that separates them of Him. Such a desire searches for a secret place so that the soul cries the absence of his/her/its Beloved, which comes more quickly by sea that by terrestrial way; if, on the sea of the tears, we send him the ship of our heart gotten under way for his/her/its arrival, it will immediately be with us... Of those that cry on the spouse's absence, he/it is said in the Hymn of the hymns: & laquo Your eyes are as those of the dove on the water of the streams... "

The eyes of the doves are of themselves weepy, and they never stop moaning because of the big love that they contain, so that there is not a bird as in love that the dove. And because the love of these men is full of clarity and that it has not been soiled by the things of the earth, one compares their eyes to those of the half notes doves that appear have been washed with milk, because they are white as it. And as well as the white doves are more pleasant and more sociable than the other, so those that, flaming of love, cry to get the grace of the Lord, are more pleasant than all others men to him and he/it unites to them. One says that their eyes are of the streams of tears that flow, because they don't hope to be comforted only by the tears, but also by the spiritual joy that God will infuse them then and that surpasses the tears in value. And the sage says that these white doves were very close to seated the abundant rivers, expressing by this position their will to persevere in the tears until the Lord visits them...There is, in this ay of the contemplation, some that one can call progressing, and that occupy the second degree; in the intimate contemplation, they don't stop pouring some tears: they don't have the intention however to cry, but only to collect itself/themselves. It is why their tears spill all burning of their heart without whining nor sobs, and flow out mildly of their eyes without interior nor outside noise; so, they don't think then about what provokes the tears, but they apply merely to collect their heart... Of these precious tears, caused by the grace of the Holy spirit received in the heart, holy Bernard says in a conversation with God: & laquo When, Lord, will we know that you act in our soul and give us the signal of your arrival? The witnesses and the messengers of this consolation and this rejoicing are the tears and the sighs & raquo... Oh happy tears, by which are purified the interior spots!... In these tears, know, oh my soul, your Spouse, kisses the one that you want, intoxicate you of the stream of the gusto, pull milk and the honey of the breast of his/her/its consolation: these tears and these sighs, these are the marvelous gentleness and consolations that you give your spouse... Oh Lord Jesus, if these tears that wake in us your memory and your desire up are soft in so many manners, how much will be soft the joy that we will receive your clear and manifest vision? If it is so soft to cry for you, how much will he/it be soft to the man to be delighted with you? ... The perfect have other tears, but more perfect: they are caused by the joy that they receive while seeing itself/themselves beloved of God, joy that his/her/its grace gives them in abundance...hese tears to that procure a supreme Joy, begin in this third state and perfect contemplation to end in the sky where the. joy will stay in fullness, and where the hand of the Lord es5uiera our tears so that hopeless sadness, hopeless trace or taste of sadness doesn't mingle with this total joy. However, as well as on this earth we don't have any fire without smoke, we don't have a pure enough grace not to cry: because we possess it on a foreign earth where we can lose it. It is why if, in this pilgrimage, our heart kisses God, it is delighted with one so big joy; but this one, in his/her/its excess, turns into tears... If you want, oh my soul, that the sterile earth of your flesh gives you some fruits, water it with your tears, because it is written that those that sow in the tears collect in the rejoicing. And if you want that the tree of your flesh fructifies, plant the close to the current of the waters of your eyes, and in his/her/its time it will give the fruit, and everything that you will make will be prosperous... As well as the Jews didn't arrive to the Earth promised without passing by the sea and by the Jordan, so you won't be able to succeed to perfection in pouring bitter tears first for your sins and soft tears for the desire of the Lord. And if you want to be raised from the earth to the height of the contemplation as Noah's ark, multiply in you waters while opening the fountains of the sea that are the wounds of your spouse Christ, free in you the streams of the sky of the Divinity, to possess the full abundance of the holy deluge some that you run away,: it is he that the wife possessed, and that was called in the Hymn the well of the quick waters that runs with the impulsiveness of the Lebanon mount. You possess wells of quick waters when you spill some tears for the humanity of your spouse Christ, but if you want that this well becomes finally a bridge that bounds until the eternal life, make so that comes in you the impulsiveness of the Lebanon mount, that is the tears poured for his/her/its divinity. Translates of Spanish by Ivan Gobry

Saint Pierre of Alcantara 1499-1562

Pierre Garavito, born in Alcantara in Estrémadure, entered to sixteen years at the Minor brothers of the Custodie of the Saint Gospel, who belonged to the terrifying reform" of removed them. It is one of the most fascinating personalities of Spain of the sixteenth century: reformer, he/it gives to his/her/its foundations of the constitutions of a heroism extraordinary preacher, he/it upsets the crowds; ascetic, he/it leads during forty years a frightening life, only sleeping seated and eating a little grass every three days; spiritual master, he/it drags to perfection all souls that become attached to him; mystical, he/it lives in a continual prayer, devoured of a love of which he/it cannot hide the sensitive radiance. He/it wrote very little; outside of his/her/its letters and Constitutions, one only knows him only one work: the Treaty of the prayer and the Meditation, published in 1556.

Biography: STÉPHANE Flat, Saint Pierre of Alcantara, Franciscans, 1960, 144 pages,. work: Treated of the prayer and the Meditation, François, 1923, 216 pages. Paris, Edition FranciscaineParis, Bookstore Saint François.

PRAYER

Over it all virtues, I ask you, Lord, that you granted me the grace to like you of all my heart, of all my soul, of all my strengths, of all my innards, as you recommend it to me. Oh you that are all my hope, all my glory, all my shelter and all my joy! Oh friend of the friends! Oh spouse in bloom, sweet spouse, soft spouse as the honey! Oh sweetness of my cceur! Oh life of my soul! Oh rest and happiness of my mind! Oh beautiful and clear day of the eternity! Oh soft light of my innards and paradise in bloom of my heart! Oh my agreeable principle and my sufficient end! Prepare, my God, prepare in me, Lord, a pleasant home for you, so that, according to the promise of your holy speech, you came in me and that you took a rest in me. Mortify in me everything that displeases to your eyes, and make of me a man according to your heart. Wound, Lord, the most intimate of my soul of the arrows of your love and intoxicate it of the wine of your perfect charity. Oh! when will he/it be some so? When will I be you pleasant in all? When won't he/it remain more anything of that that displeases you in me? When will I be all yours? When will I stop being mine? When won't I find pleased in me anything that is you foreign? When will I like you with an extreme ardor? When will I be aflame the flame of your love? When will I be penetrated quite and weakened by your very efficient suavity? When will you open to this poor beggar and will discover him you the infinite beauties of your Kingdom, who is in the middle of me, and yourself who is with all your riches? When will I be delighted, drowned, elated and hidden of it you, to be lost there forever? When will you have raised all obstacles and the obstacles, so that I only make a same mind with you and that I can be separate never again of you? Oh the love, the beloved of my soul! Oh sweetness of my heart! Grant me, Lord, no because of my merits, but by your infinite goodness! Teach me, illuminate me, direct me and help me in all things, so that I make to some and tell some no that is you pleasant. Oh my God! my love, my innards, well of my soul, oh my soft love! Oh my big delights! Oh my strength, fortify me! my light, direct me! Oh God of my innards, why don't you give yourselves to the poor? You fill the heaven of the earth, and you let my empty heart! Do you don the lilies of the fields, do you prepare the food of the small birds and do you take care of the toward earth, why did you forget me, me that forgot everything for you? Infinite goodness, I knew you too late; I liked you too late, so old and so new beauty! What sad time for me that the one where I didn't like you! That he/it is sad for me of you not to have known! What blindness was mine, when I didn't see you! You were inside of me, and I went looking for you to the outside. But since I found you so late, don't permit, Lord, that I ever leave you of the things that please you the more and that wound you best to the heart, these are the eyes that know how to see you, give me of such eyes, Lord, so that I consider you. I hear the simple eyes of the dove, of the chaste eyes, the shy eyes, the humble and in love eyes, the eyes dévôts and weepy, of the attentive and intelligent eyes, to hear your will and to accomplish it, so that while looking at you with such eyes, at me am looked of you with these eyes of which you looked at holy Pierre, when made him cry you his/her/its sin; with the eyes of which you looked at the prodigal child, when you left to receive it and to give him the kiss of peace; with these eyes of which you looked at the publicain, when he/it didn't dare to raise the eyes in the sky; with these eyes of which you looked at Madeleine, when she/it washed you the feet with the tears of his; finally with these eyes of which you looked at the wife in the Hymn of the Hymns, when you tell to him: & laquo You are beautiful, my friend, you are beautiful, your eyes are eyes of dove"; so that you granted to the pleasure of my eyes and the beauty of my soul of the earnings of virtue and grace that always make it to you beautiful. Very high, very lenient and very beneficent Trinidad, Father, son and Saint Mind, only one true God, teach me, direct me and help me, Lord, in all things! Oh Father all powerful, by the size of your infinite power, establish and consolidate my memory in you and fill it of saints and religious thoughts! Oh very powerful son, by your eternal Wisdom, illuminate my understanding of the light of the sovereign truth and decorate the of the knowledge of my extreme baseness! Oh Mind Saint, love of the Father and the son, by your incomprehensible goodness, summon me all your wills and inflame my heart of one so big love that all waters can extinguish it! Oh Trinidad Saint, my only God and all my Good, oh! if I could like you and could rent you as like you and rent you the angels! Oh! if I had the love of all creatures, how much I would give it to you gladly and I would transport it you of it, although this love was not sufficient to like you as you deserve it. There are only you only that can be pleased and like you worthily, because there are only you only that understood your incomprehensible goodness, and so you only can like it as much as she deserves it: it is therefore only in this divine chest that keeps the justice and the love. Oh Marie, Marie, Marie, a lot of Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Queen of the Sky, mistress of the world, sanctuary of the Saint Mind, lily of purity, rose of patience, paradise of delights, mirror of chastity, model of innocence, pray for this poor exile and this pilgrim, and make leaves him of the superabundances of your very abundant charity. Oh you, holy and holy blesseds, oh you blissful minds that burn love for your creator, VOU8 mainly seraphs who scorch the heaven and the earth of your love, don't forget my poor and miserable heart, purify it as the lips of Isaïe of all spots and all sins, and inflame it, burn it of the fire of your very ardent love, so that I like Our only Lord solely only, that I only look for him only, that me me, rest and that I die in him only in every century of the centuries. Amen!

MEDITATION AND CONTEMPLATION

We must exercise ourselves to join the meditation and the contemplation together while making of one a scale to go up until the other. It will be therefore good to know that the exercise of the meditation consists in the attentive and reflexive consideration of the divine chose3, and to pass the some to the other to make them produce in our heart of the movements and the loving feelings: more or less as when one hits a stone with a lighter, one pulls of it from the sparks; I hear that it is necessary to be under the impression of these movements and these tender feelings, to be held in rest and in silence in their enjoyment, without making use of the mind to reason and to search for the truth that one contemplates a simple view. It is for it that a holy doctor said that the meditation needs our works to produce his/her/its fruits, and that the contemplation produces his spontaneously; that one looks for and that the other finds: that one corn salad food and that the other feels the taste of it; that one is discoureuse or argumentative and that the other is content with the simple view of the things, because she/it already has the taste and the love of it; finally that one is the means and the other the end; that one is the path and the walk, and the other the term where leads to this path and rest. ...

When the one that meditates arrived to rest and the taste of the contemplation, he/it must let the devout, but laborious research of the meditation and, happy of a simple view and God's memory (as if he/it saw it present), to enjoy the feeling of his/her/its presence, depending on whether he/it is granted to him, that he/it is of love, admiration, joy and all other nature. The reason of this advice, it is that the end of all this solid work in the love and the holy movements of the heart, and no in the speculation of the understanding, when the heart is touched and in love of the holy love, we must separate all reasonings and all research of the mind, as much as it is possible to us, so that our soul uses to this love all his/her/its strengths and that the acts of the other powers don't come to distract it. ..; It is necessary to quit the movement when one arrived to the term, and to let the meditation for the love of the contemplation... It for "several reasons: one, it is that one can suppose that then work and the meditation that have just finished should have produced some affections and some feelings for God, the other, that is that, as says the Sage, is the end of the prayer better that the beginning; a third reason, it is that, after the work of the prayer and the meditation, it is reasonable to give a little relaxation to the mind and to let rest it in the arms of the contemplation. It is whereas it is necessary to erase all pictures that are presented themselves to the imagination, to loosen the mind, to rid the memory and to fix it in Our Lord, considering that one is in his/her/its presence, without however nothing to consider individual relatively to God, being content with the knowledge that one has him by the faith, and to apply on him the heart and will. It is the only means to scorch itself/themselves of the divine love, and it is in it that the fact of the whole meditation consists. What the understanding can know God is not nearly anything, but the heart can help it a lot. It is necessary to lock itself in the middle of oneself, in the bottom of his/her/its soul where is God's picture, in and there, to be he attentive, as the one that listens an another one that speaks him of the top of a high tower of it, or as if one had it in his/her/its creur, or as if all over the world, he/it had something else there that oneself or only God. What do I say? The soul must forget itself herself and must forget what it makes; because, as said a Father, the perfect prayer is the one that one makes without wondering that one makes it. However, it is not only at the end of the exercise, mai.3 again to the middle, but in all other place, that we must take this spiritual sleep, where the understanding is lulled by will. When he/it comes, we must make one pause and enjoy this kindness, then to return to our work, when we don't have anything anymore to digest, nor to taste this food. This is not as well as the fact a gardener who waters a square? When his/her/its gully is filled of water, it stops some and block the course so that water spills and infiltrate in innards dried of the earth that receives it; it makes, it releases the current of the source again, so that it comes more water and that the arrosement is better, but what the soul feels then, the joy that it doesn't find in light and the glut of the peace and the charity would know how to express themselves by words. It is there that is the peace that surpasses all feeling and the whole happiness of which one can enjoy in this life. He/it is some that are so in love of God's love that hardly they have begun to think about him that Me to remember his/her/its soft name inflames them innards. Ceux-Ià doesn't have more need for Me to like to discourse and to reason, that the mother or the wife to be delighted with the memory of his/her/its son or his/her/its spouse when someone speaks of it to him. He/it is some of others that, in the prayer as out of the prayer, are delighted so and absorbed in God, that for him they lose view, themselves and all things. If the fear of a mean madman can sometimes put us in a similar state, is it astonishing that the love of the infinite Beauty is able to make it? Would the grace therefore be less powerful than the nature and that the pain?At the time therefore that the soul will feel in this state, in some place of the prayer that it is, it should make sure to make anything to make quit it, it had to spend the whole time of the exercise without asking God nor to meditate the things that it had prepared there, unless they were of obligation; bus says holy Augustin, it is necessary to let the vocal prayer if it arrives that it is to put obstacle to the devotion; however, I say as well as it is necessary to let the meditation, when it would prevent the contemplation. From there, we will take opportunity to make notice that, if it is good to let the meditation to deliver itself/themselves to the affections of the heart and to pass thus from the less at more, it won't be less appropriate to let the way of the loving feelings from time to time to come back to the meditation, especially when the heart would be overheated so that this state would have some health hazards, if one persevered there, what enough frequently arrives to people that, without observing this opinion, deliver himself to these exercises and abandon themselves of it without discretion, attracted that they are by the strength of the divine suavity. In equal case, 'says a doctor, there is a good remedy, it is to give way to some feelings of compassion, while meditating a little "Christ's Passion, or the gravity of the sin, or the miseries of the world: it allègera and will relieve the heart.

Texts translated of Spanish by abbot Cenat of the Her
Saint Pascal Baylon 1540-1592

Descended of peasants aragonais, Pascal started learning the contemplative life while exercising his/her/its shepherd's profession. Refused a first time by the brothers Minor alcantarins when he/it was eighteen years old, he/it persevered in his/its project and was admitted definitely six years later by them. Brother porter of his/her/its convent, he/it knew all his/her/its life a stupendous reputation of brother of the poor people, of thaumaturge, of seer, of fervid worshipper of Jesus Hostie, before which he/it spent every day several hours in prayer. Canonized in 1690, he/it was proclaimed, by Léon XIII, boss of the Conventions and works eucharistiques. One has him some poems and prayers, all written in honor of the Saint-Sacrament.

Biographies: O. ENGLEBERT, Saint 1942, 80 pages. L.A. OF PORRENTRUY, pages.

Do RELIGIOUS VERSES SAY ME, my God, of this heart that you like? - Sinner, you will be able to make remain I if you want. why leave you say, my God, since you created me and came to purchase me, and as bread give you to eat, and you are made the host of my soul, I know that you won't hunt the one that you admitted to your table. - Sinner, you will be able to make remain I if you want. My God, since I am a small poor, and a pilgrim coward, remain with me, although he/it is late. I received you in my manor. , And don't go from it, you will separate of me the bad thoughts. - Sinner you will be able to make remain I if you want.Don't leave, light and glory, remain, Lord, remain with me so that I get with you my food, my victory. Don't leave because you are where you don't seem that you are. - Sinner you will be able to make remain I if you want. Since yu give me the hand, with you, my God, I will fight, until I lack the foot; the fragile love of the world, doesn't let it to me to keep more when you will see me faltering. - Sinner you will be able to make remain I if you want. Truly divine bread, pull me to myself, receive me, my God, in you, because in you I live and in me I die. Doesn't leave me, because you give me to have it of your holdings. - Sinner, you will be able to make remain I if you want.

Prayer after the communion

LORD my God, Christ, son of the living God, that on the day of your holy Last Supper, by the infinite charity with which you always liked us, instituted and neat the holy Sacrament of your precious Body and your very pure Blood in memory of your very painful Passion, and gave to eat to your holy Apostles your sacred flesh and to drink your precious Blood; I implore you, Lord, and ask you humbly to want to really ease the toughness of my heart and to give me of the tears of compunction, with which I wash his/her/its sins my soul sinner; because I sinned until today of a lot of manners, that means by thoughts, by words, by looks and by actions. It is my mistake, Lord, my big mistake; but indeed I confess and firmly I believe you of it, 'Lord, you can forgive me all my sins by your infinite goodness and mercy. Therefore, my soft Lord, forgive them to me all, because of all I repent, and I have the firm subject henceforth to keep me to sin. has my very compassionate Lord, give to your servant such a devotion that he/it receives you in" your grace. You said, Lord, of your mouth,: & laquo I am the living bread descended of the Sky: if someone eats this bread, he/it will live eternally." has very soft bread, heal the palace of my heart, so that he/it feels the suavity of your love; heal it of all pain, so that he/it feels other sweetness that yours. Oh sanctified bread, that have in yourselves all delight and all flavor, that always comfort us and that make us defect ever! That my heart eats you therefore and that innards of my soul are filled of your delectable sweetness and your soft flavor. Oh very holy bread! Oh bread of life! Oh very pure bread that descended of the sky and that give life in the whole world! Come Lord, come to my heart; that my soul feels the sweetness of your blissful presence! Move away of me all my enemies, whom stops watching me. That they flee out of the presence of your infinite power, so that, kept well by you to the outside and to the I go in, by the right way to the eternal Kingdom, where constantly I will contemplate your face-to-face gas and will be eternally happy with you. So either him. Texts translated of Spanish by Joseph

Jean of Bonilla XVIe century

It is per person interposed that this Spanish Franciscan exercised his influence. One didn't notice his/her/its small Treaty of the Peace of the soul, published in Alcala in 1580, enough indeed and titled the Trail of the Paradise again. He/it approaches in fifteen prudent chapters a doctrine and a method of spiritual blossoming, that one will recover later at François saint of Dirty, the school nasturtium of the XVIIe century, and especiallyAmbroise of Lombez. But it was certainly the théatain Laurent Scupoli (15301610), author of the famous spiritual Fight (appeared in 1589), that was inspired one of the first of the Treaty of the peace of the soul, to the point that one often published the work of Bonilla among his/her/its writings. Bibliography: LAURENT SCUPOLI, the spiritual Fight followed of the Trail of the Paradise (or the interior Peace), translation of the abbot JULES BONHOMME, Gabalda, 1920, 360 pages (The interior Peace only occupies 4° pages.)

THE ABANDONMENT TO GOD

Come to me, said the Lord, you all that are harrassés and loaded, and I will relieve you. "Come, he/it doubles in another place, come to the source of waters, all as much that you are of altered, and I would stem your thirst. It is this reprimand, and this so soft and so honorable vocation, that you must follow without hurling down you to warn the movement of the Holy spirit, especially as it is his turn to take you by the hand to lead you in a place where the waves of his/her/its infinite goodness take you to really carry away you far from all created things. As for you, what you have to make to help this soft violence, it is to raise all powers of your soul and to adjust your outside behavior so, that you have other aim, other ambition, nor other curiosity that the research of everything that can contribute to the glory of his/her/its Name. However, that it makes itself as usually, without effort; otherwise, if our heart suffered some from the constraint, it would be enough to make it hard, sour and stubborn. All violences that make himself against the inclination of the heart are capable to disturb his/her/its rest, or even to hunt it for a long time. Follow my advice: accustom yourselves, I tell it to you again, accustom yourselves to stay continually in the thought and the meditation of the divine mercy and the charitable kindness that her you départit at all hour, without being pushed there besides that by herself. Receive with acknowledgments and due submissiveness the favors that she/it pours in your soul: it is the means to attract some others. I warn you of doesn't dawn to move you to cry, of doesn't dawn to pull you sobs of the chest, of doesn't dawn to give you by strength of the devotion feelings, and of not to take the make-believes and the mines of the true mercy.

If you are as in a desolate region, stay there restful, until the dew falls of in top. Hope some for good effect of God's will that let you in this lost country. That if he/it is finally pleasing to his/her/its charity to send you a rain of tears, oh, that these tears will be soft, since they won't have been forced to leave by your impatience, but on the contrary, that Jesus' good eye will have made them distill his/her/its grace, and that the divine hands will only have made them spring. It will be then your turn to receive it with a deep humility and to raise the eyes in the sky from where generosities will have fallen you. If it happens to you to presume to have had one of these good feelings while bandaging you the mind, you will be infallibly ready to lose the continuation and the fruit of it. Here it is which way I began and which way I want to finish; has the key, the spring and the secret of all this business: it is that anything is not necessary to hope for your strengths, nor of your address, that is to say that it is not necessary to push you on yourself, but to stay seated to the feet of the Lord with the Madeleine, listening to what he/it will tell you, without losing you and to let you transport with Marthe, that will be the face of your body, peacefully.

Make sure that your enemies (of which most troublesome is yourself), don't withdraw you from this sacred rest. When, on the wings of your thoughts and your desires, he/it will take you desire to aim right to God to unite you to him and to rest you in him by this union, don't imagine it in comparison of the terrestrial and finished things; give him neither term nor face, as having neither extremity nor limited heights, as being present in all things, and all things subsisting in him. You must represent yourselves that it is an Extent full of efficiency, a Power all big, an absolute Authority, a Very inexhaustible, an infinite being, an Abyss without bottom, an inconceivable Marvel, an incomprehensible World; has the topic of your contemplations, or rather of your admirations. His/her/its divinity is of a so vast and so excessive capacity that she fills all, and pass again beyond. However, you will find it entire in your soul when you will come it there to look for, so long as it is with the voice of the humility and the eyes of the confidence. Because he/it is true that his/her/its delights are to be with the children of the men, and one can hardly conceive how he/it likes staying among them, not because he/it would have some need of it, but only in order to make they worthy of his/her/its love. These are these truths and these beneficial impressions that your understanding must search for, and in them that your will must take a rest as in the center of his/her/its ambitions, no more than that to move to make new enterprises nor. Don't grant a value to the number and to the length of your prayers, nor to your other devotions that would oblige you to make, to pray or to read so much, and not more or less. Consider your heart in such a liberty that where he/it will find his/its rest, he/it stops of it and taste the secret sweets that he/it will be pleasing to Our Lord of him départir. So because of some obstacle, you omit to make a part of that that you projected, you don't sadden some..., because the goal of your exercises being to enjoy God, when you met it, the means that drove well to such an end can stop, since they don't have an use anymore. He/it is not anything of as contrary to the real rest and to the holy peace that the worry to finish an enterprise of which one himself stubborn to come to tip. When one attaches his/her/its mind to make nécesairement this or it, God cannot have us more freely nor can lead us where he would like. What is it otherwise to force it to adapt to our fantasy, to prefer our wills to his, to want to satisfy it on one hand and to displease to him of the other by the contempt that one makes to some, in a word to look for it while fleeing it? To advance in this royal garden and to arrive to the goal that you imposed yourselves, don't have another intention that to want to possess your Creator. Somewhere that you met it and that he/it presents himself/itself to you, leave the whole remains and: stop yourselves to him without passing besides, until he/it gives you the permission to part with him, or that he/it obliges you there while retiring. You must believe firmly that anything of that that is in this world only deserves you thought of it, except to maintain you with the one that purchased you.

If it is the pleasure of this supreme majesty to move away sometimes of you, it is whereas you will be able to continue to look for it while pursuing your practices of devotion, in order to meet it by their means. And when it will happen to you to possess the good of this discovery, immediately abandon all other occupation to Enjoy has your joy of it... The experience will learn you that there is not a more discovered path, nor that leads more right and more firmly to the eternal life, that the one of the peace of which we speak; as soon as you will have entered there, you will see how God's love - and the neighbor's love that is necessary to arrive there - will spill in your soul and will penetrate all his/her/its substance. Our Lord, talking of this love, says that it came to throw on the earth a certain fire that it wants to let always. Pay attention: this fire is of two natures; bus if God's love doesn't have any limits, the neighbor's love is not him in it similar; it needs the moderation and boundary-marks, and if you received it without some prudent restraint, you would mine your rest: while wanting to win the other, you would make get lost only yourself. Like your neighbor so that you don't forget yourselves; help it, so long as it is without damage for your soul and without prejudice for your salute...Truly, he/it is good that this big ardor and this thirst of your neighbor's salute is in you: but she/it must be born there by God's operation and not to be awake by your own cares, by the indiscretion of your too hot goodwill... Don't occupy all your soul, don't sow anything of yourself there: that God throws the seed that he will want there, only hold yourselves in a state as he can work there without obstacle. He/it wants to see detached it of the whole remains, to return himself her his. Let-Iui the free field, make that he/it finds it otherwise idle, of the less as being of leisure, that means: don't have anything between the hands when he/it will present himself/itself to visit it... That no worry worries you: walk alone and stripped of all, and God will don you of his/her/its lights... He/it will become your star and your guide. If you forget yourselves yourself, his/her/its love will take care of you, as the one that must order in you and to hold in some way places it of your soul... If you don't think to be the main worker of the task, it will be God's that you will have to praise of it. So long as you let it make and that you only offered him your soul ridded of the cares of the earth, with a desire inflamed to see his/her/its perfectly accomplished will... Adapted of the anonymous French translation of 1653
Jean of the Angels 1609

Brother Minor alcantarin, Juan of Los Angeles had to his time a renown that clears the borders of Spain quickly. One begins to depreciate his/her/itswork strongly, because of the numerous plagiarisms that one discovers there, to the costs notably of Ruysbroeck, Harphius, François of Osuna, Luis of Léon, holy Jean of the Cross,. These loans, if they condemn Me originality of his/her/its works, don't yet weaken the doctrine of it. Let's mention him: Triumphs of God's love, Dialogues of the Conquest of God's Kingdom and Considerations on the Hymn of the Hymns.

JESUS SERA LIKES UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD

Patriarch Jacob, prophesying his/her/its son Joseph the good successes that he had to have, says that they would last until the Desire of the eternal Hills, that is to say until Christ, who names itself the Desire of the eternal Hills, by which is sensible here all those that have been raised to the virtue and that wanted Christ. However, what we name here desire is in the original a word that means an affection without rest, affection that opens the chest continually with ardor and desire. So that it is very clean thing of Christ, ordered for him only and prophesied of him before he/it was born here below, to be liked, cherished and wanted with excellence... I say that there was always, and that there will always be some souls in love with Christ, and one will never see to miss the demonstrations of these blissful desires; one will always be thirsty of him; always one will have desire to see it; will have soft sighs, faithful witnesses of the ardor of the heart, always. He/it is more possible than light misses in the sun that the world lacks souls that like and adores Christ, because this love is the support of the world, and it is he that holds it as by the hand, so that it doesn't come to falter. Because the world is not, otherwise insofar as it will be in it someone that burns for Christ. Because as well as everything that we see has been made so that he/it served to Christ's glory, so when there would not be men on earth who cherish it anymore, the centuries would finish, useless to this reason they have been created. So that Christ is as the center to which stretches all desires and the loves of all creatures, and the world looks at it and kiss it of all sides... we can say that it is a blazing love that converts in ember the heart of his/her/its friends, to enlarge the passion of those that likes it a lot more. Because the world of the lovers of this Beloved - although they are without number - is not so big that the love that they carry him is quick, ardent and firm. Finally, it is a deep, innate love and product in them by the Holy spirit, as says holy Paul: The Christ's charity has been spilled in our courses by the mind-Saint who said nothing about us given & raquo,And what will miss to this love, since him is the invoice of the Holy spirit? Will it be something else that a love worthy of God, and makes like the Sky, where the Seraphs scorch themselves? All loves with which the men like themselves here below are of the shades and the very imperfect tests of this love, that eat at the heart of those that likes Christ. It is why he/it is named the Beloved par excellence, because God forms us of it, before we liked it, a love different of all others loves and that has a big advantage on them. Love that the writing names hunger and thirst with big property, because more one likes Christ, more the desire to like it comes to grow, and it is even thing to like it that to eat it and to drink it; and when it is drunk and is eaten of this sort, it becomes even thing with those that eat its full some. From there comes that this love is so strong and powerful, that one will pull innards to the martyr without pulling it the love that is in these innards. Adapted of the anonymous translation of 1609

First provincial, in 1616,

of the province of the immaculate Conception, erected in Aquitaine under the impulse of the new reform of the Récolletses, the Father Rubéric was observant of the primitive Observance. After his/her/its years of supériorat, he/it delivered himself/itself to the predication and published a set of spiritual works very appreciated for their doctrinal content. It was notably: The introduction to the Practice of the interior Acts, The Exercises of Jesus' love (162 3), The spiritual Conduct of the Souls according to the Hymn of the Hymns (163 I). Work: The Way of love - sacred Exercises of Jesus' love, text reviewed by M.M. SAEYEYS, Bloud and Gay, 1927, 325 p.

UNION TO GOD AND APOSTOLATE

Those that preach and that work to the salute of the souls must be legates of Christ, sent of his/her/its part to reconcile the sinners with the eternal Father. Those that, by ambition, are in charge themselves of this sacred mission, that solicit the ecclesiastical loads and the office to govern the souls, to preach and to work in the grapevine of our Mr., are not sent as it is necessary. It is not Jesus' love that pushes them to the apostolate, but their clean interest and their vain glory; also their ministry is nearly without fruits. It is necessary that it is Jesus' pure love that pushes to take the office to attend to the salute of the souls; love that subjects to make or to not to make, to undertake or to not to undertake, depending on whether Jesus in will have arranged, love that makes the soul see that so Jesus doesn't send it and doesn't drive it, armed of his/her/its mind, she cannot make anything that is worth. Oh my soft Mr., that can make without You an as weak creature that the human soul is, in a work as difficult that to move the hearts and to submit the men to the faith and to the observance of God's commands? It is necessary therefore that the soul is sent of Jesus, driven by his/her/its mind, that it is abandoned completely and subject to his/her/its direction, to his/her/its wills and arrangements, that it is finally united to his/her/its goodness and to his/her/its love to operate like an instrument of this goodness and this love, by which only Jesus converts the souls to Him. They must join the good angels of the souls again to which they are sent. They must no to warn, but to follow and to come with the interior graces that God makes to the souls. They must be of the cooperators of his/her/its graces, making depend on them all their operation. However nothing of all it is not able to itself if they are not in the state of the union consecrated with God. It is why the bishops, preachers, confessors, directors of souls must be arrive there.It is the state of perfection some which they must be established (according to Denys saint). If they are there, how would they drive the other there? If they are not united to Christ, how will they unite Him the souls? Our soft Mr. attended the night to this exercise of union with his/her/its Father, in order to be able to preach during the day. It was to learn us by his/her/its example how, of the union with God, we must go to the salute of the souls. The Apostles only took care of two things: the prayer by which they united to God, and the predication by which they converted the souls... The most necessary quality maybe to the workers of the salute of the souls, who are to be perfectly flexible between God's hands, be excellently in the souls raised to the sacred union. These souls are mobile, ready to everything that God wants, of some side that he wants them to turn, to life or to the death, to the glory or to the infamy, to honor or to the laughingstock of everybody, to the noble or vile actions, to the soft or to the laborious, to the comfortable or to the laborious, to the actions of wisdom or madness, prudence or silliness according to the world... It is why Christ chose the apostles, first preachers of the universe, ignorant and deprived of all social science.

The human, terrestrial and carnal wisdom, is contrary to the God's pure wisdom, by which only one can hear the admirable mysteries that seems to that wisdom that madness. The animal man cannot conceive them, said holy Paul, it is necessary that it is the spiritual man... So united to the divine Wisdom, the soul draws continually to this source lives the very high and sublime Doctrine of the mind, said holy Jean Chrysostome. She/it has in her Christ, Sun of the true Wisdom, and this union makes it all spiritual, capable to discern all things. She/it is above all worldly darkness of wisdom and the vanity; she/it is detached of her/its own conceptions and free of all attachment, in order to not to preach what she/it wants and that seems beautiful and just to the natural light, but Christ's only doctrine, and of Christ crucified and resuscitated. It is there the plain mistake that commits, to the prejudice of the souls, the preachers and those that govern them: they preach and speak the most often according to their own lights, useless and inefficient to convert the souls. In it they are all the contrary of that that they must; they are necessary, on the contrary, to be detached perfectly of their own judgment... The holy union carries the soul, by love, to everything that Jesus likes. As he/it cherishes the souls therefore very lovingly, his/her/its wife also carries them a singular charity; blazing, soft, compassionate, patient charity, right, uniform, déiforme, always stretching, according to this union, to his/her/its Beloved; charity that carries the soul to consult the will of his/her/its Spouse and his/her/its love, in everything that looks at the salute of the souls, always. The perfection of this charity that those that work for the souls must possess, is explained very well by the divine holy Paul: "The charity, he/it says, is patient, benign, she/it is not envious, she/it is not nor tumultuous, precipitate daring, she/it is not ambitious, don't think doesn't judge anybody badly, is not pleasing to the sins that commit themselves, but is delighted greatly when the souls leave them and kiss the truth; she/it endures all things, hope for all, support all. "

It is the big charity that the apostolic people exercise for the a lot of souls, (charity of which is only capable the souls very purified, and that are united to Jesus by the love; charity without which one cannot make anything for the salute of the souls. The charity, that is the murderess of the sins, makes them persecute the mistakes of the world, the pains, with hue and cry the iniquities that commit themselves of it against 'God, give them a soft joy of that that the souls leave the sins to kiss the virtues. When the sinners make them endure a lot of pains, of contradictions and pains, the charity that they carry them in Jesus' union (that, even though he/it has been crucified by them, like them again curiously) makes them endure them all in order to get them their conversion, of which they never despair, for mean and obstinate that are the souls. Even though they ridicule what he/it tells them for their good, the in love with Jesus perseveres, and pursues the work of their salute always, that he only undertook on Jesus' speech and for his/her/its love...Oh excellent charity! clean to a soul that is united to Jesus, the in love with the souls! Oh necessary charity to those that work in the grapevine of the Lord, that will make them persistent, patient, soft, benign, restful and merciful towards all souls either persisted some perverse that they are! Oh my softMr., give this divine charity to those to which You communicate one so excellent office, and grant me to like you solely and to like, in your love, all souls that You cherish so tenderly... Oh my God, my Jesus and my All, oh ardent love Fire, burn my heart; burn it so strong, that he/it sprang from it, as yours, of the flames that devour the sins that You hate, and propel toward You the souls that you liked so dearly and for which I will never quit to ask you for Your Saint Love.

Benoît of Canfeld 1562-1610

Leader of the school nasturtium of the seventeenth century, Benoît of Canfeld succeeded in giving to twenty-three years of religious life the apostolic and literary fertility of a long career. Original of Canfeld in the county of Essex, Guillaume Filch was of puritanical family. After one inattentive youth, he/it converts to the Catholicism, passed in France and entered in the order of the brothers Minor capuchins. Soul of prayer and judgment, he/it was revealed quickly like an exceptional authority concerning prayer: it is his that one will ask for the ultimate decision about the ecstasies of Mrs. Acarie. Mr. of the beginners and famous preacher, his/her/its goodwill carried it again toward the singular, numerous cases were the conversions and the religious vocations that decided under his/her/its immediate influence, notably those of the fathers Angel of Happy and Joseph of the Tremblay. Disembarked in England to convert his/her/its former coréligionnaires there, he/it was thrown there in jail and didn't owe his/her/its liberation that to the intervention of Henri IV. He/it died àParis in odor of holiness.

66;Ses works most famous are: The devout and serious Soliloquy, autobiography essentially dedicated to the narration of his/her/its conversion; The Rule of Perfection, and The Christian Knight, treaties, one of mystical life, the other of ascetic life.

NARRATION OF HIS/HER/ITS OWN CONVERSION

Rightfully in this time then me to say with Polycarpe saint: "Oh good God, in what time have us reserved you? "Alas, Lord, this one what time is? What people and what customs do we see? The faith is exiled, the despised church, the dejected virtue and the elevated vice. Alas! I say, the sin, the schism and the heresy now dominate. It is in these days, oh my God, that I am born under these people, fed and elevated with these customs; ç'a been your will, so has it been pleasing to your divine Majesty and your Providence... I will always sing you a hymn of praise, and will offer you the chalice of action of graces; because in some times and place that I was, with some people and however I lived, your goodness doesn't have me forsaken at all, but threw me now in another state and changed my pain in good. Oh my Lord, me then only to consider this course hurled down of desperate life some which I went off the track and so long distant of you... Ç'a been the wild and unhappy state in which I lived until today, like a coward and Christian poor person.Oh Lord, don't remember the mistakes of my youth, nor of my ignorance. Nothing else could notice itself in me that a superficial resemblance with a miserable and neglectful Christian. Because if me a branch of the true grapevine was not, how could I carry the good fruit? If me a member of the body was not, what could I help to the chief? However, I was not member of Christ, since I was not in his/her/its Church... I lived body, but I had died according to the soul. Alas, Lord, I often broke your holy commands, daily, I committed a lot of deadly sins, all my life was only a heap of sins and loathsome offenses, continually I provoked your life and your wrath against me; the conscience me bourrelait, and I was tormented until the most secret parts of my heart. The greed gnawed me, the superb overwhelmed me, the desire consumed me, lust inflamed me, the lubricity poisoned to me, the greed carried away me, the insobriety confounded me, the detraction tore me, the ambition supplanted me, the lightness carried away me, the carelessness oppressed me, the hypocrisy deceived me, and the favor boasted. But you are the one that delivered me of all these perverse nations. Here is, Lord, those with that I lived since the day of my birth, that I served and to which I kept the faith... And however, Lord, you never subtracted entirely me your grace; your goodness didn't abandon me, not even when, in a space of about seven years, I lived very perilously in this place dangerous of London; time that I consumed miserably while feeding my fantasy of the vanities of this place, and frequenting the pastimes that one takes there customarily...

I sinned against the sky and against you; I am not now worthier to be called your son. With the world I went off the track; with people overflowed I followed the pleasure. Alas! I held the spacious path of the hell: no one took to me, no one forbade me, no one admonished me... You only, my Lord and my God, shouted me to high voice that I left this monstrous and hideous life; but in one so deep sleep, I didn't hear your warning; in one so powerful sleepiness, I didn't know how to hear your voice... I was enveloped so of darkness, that I only liked darkness, and as I didn't know light by no means, I was blinded and, me complaisant in the obscurity, I walked by darkness in the deep and darker abysses of the sin, until you began inside my soul these very holy and beneficial words: "Trusted lux: light is made... .

And truly she/it has been made expeditiously: immediately this troublesome cloud that had veiled my eyes is extinct and vanished: I saw your light and I recognized your voice; and I said: "In truth, Lord, you are my God who pulled me from the darkness and the shade of the death, that called me to the knowledge of your infallible light and make so that I now see. I also return you the immortal graces, my God, my illuminator, of what he/it pleased you to convert me. I saw darkness to which I had been, and the dark abyss where I had stayed, of which I had big fright. And I said in my heart: "Misfortune to the darkness that so long kept me... Misfortune to this blindness that stopped me from seeing the vivid light of the sky, and misfortune again to me when. . . . .

To by my ignorance, I didn't know you, you that are my only God and Lord, light, joy and the hope of my soul, who finally have so mysteriously me convert and so very indirect my heart of the vanities of this world, that soon after me made the three wishes of obedience, poverty and chastity, that me resolute to observe in the religion of your very faithful holy servant François... Lord, how much are shown you efficient agent in this business!... And how much big appeared your mercies in this mine undergoes change! When I was misled and stray, you brought back to me; when I was ignorant, you taught to me; when I was sad, you comforted me; when I was in despair, you comforted me; when I fell, you raised me; when I was standing, you kept me; when I walked, you drove me; when I came, you received me; when I slept, you kept me; when I shouted you granted me. All these earnings and an infinity of others that you lavished me in this mine conversion, my God who is the life of my soul, make therefore, Lord, that I know them, that I hear them, that I penetrate them, that I never forget them, and that day and night I meditate something of it, that no moment escapes without I return you an infinity of actions of graces of it. Because, Lord, this I will be very soft thing to speak of it always, to think of it always and to thank you always for it, so that for all I can always rent you, and to like you of all my heart and all my soul, all my understanding and all my strengths, together with all the extent of my mind and everything that I follow, Lord my God, who is the blissful sweetness of all those that hope in you. After having consumed a lot of time in frivolous things,... he/it arrived that, seeing a small book of the view of which I was in love..., I was incontinent attracted of in to read something, but no with the resolution to follow the teachings of it...

But while reading, conscience began to me remordre... But Lord, not answering your holy inspirations sufficiently, you didn't stop knocking stronger at the door of my heart; so that I began to feel my conscience extremely overwhelmed. Because of it I became sad and melancholic; then I felt my heart all excessive of extreme pain and hurried of anguish. As knowing that with those pleasures, on one hand I lived badly and of the other I could not let them by no means, pursuing reading, I looked for the loopholes to pass more slightly over... Having read the chapître that was about the account that one must return before God, I was forced, good will, pain will, to think about the narrow account that myself had to give. It touched me of so near and moved my conscience, that the thing not can conceal anymore so as big sinner that I was, I was forced to confess that I was that one even against which these horrible pains and these torments of hell were fulminated so awfully. From then on I began to discover the thick fog and the gloomy blindness in which I had lived; from then on, I live the miserable state that I had so long continued, and from then on I tried to amend my life. But alas, how many obstacles opposed! How much cauteleux appeared this subtle and artful snake! That is what he/it didn't object to me! What ambushes didn't raise me him point!... I was invested of these deadly attacks with which my enemy fought my anguished soul roughly; and me, always estimating that these were rather arguments of the reason that of the enemy's suggestions, I was tempted strongly by the temporary pleasures; the vanities of the world held me in a miserable servitude, especially since this mine new desire to serve God was not again enough strong to defeat his/her/its opposite...The good inspirations called me, but the world, the flesh, the devil kept me so that two wills, one news, the other old, one spiritual, the other carnal himself entrebattaient and divided my soul thus, so that, by experience, I found how the flesh coveted against the mind, and the mind against the flesh. I stayed two or three days dived in this madman fights, while wanting to amend my life, but I didn't want to leave the opportunities of it. In this faction, I moaned a lot and, with strength tears, I often deplored my unhappy state... During all this fight, I can say that the subtle enemy was present, but you, Lord, kept me, for fear that I gave him consent; the hideous devil is himself several times presented to me to tempt me and to seduce me, but you gave me the virtue and strength to despise it.

This same tempter came to me very powerful and very armed, and your goodness has réfréné his/her/its fury... This devil says me, I appeared transformed in angel of light: and so that he/it didn't disappoint me, you took it sourly and even you illuminated me for the good to know... During this agitation, I retired... in some lone place, so that there I had more convenience to deplore my miserable condition; you, oh Lord, know with how many tears and regrets I sighed, and how much I pushed sobs, accompanied by a big abundance of bitter tears. After being withdrawn me under a tree close to a hedge, I deliberated not to want to abstain me of my mourning and not to make quit my tears until I received some experimental grace (proving to me) that, by your goodness and your mercy, you had heard my prayers... After have been agitated by such a storm and put in a deep desolation, in the middle of one so big obscurity, you made gleam on me a ray of your goodness, whose light discovered me the multitude of my enemy's ruses and unknoted the knot of all his/her/its subtleties... So that these unrests having stopped, I stayed in big rest and tranquillity of mind...

hen the consolation of the Holy spirit warned me of such manner, and continued to pour on my heart such an abundance of peace and joy, that as being filled quite, I had forgotten the whole world... As if it had not been sufficient, you made me another very singular grace, while revealing to me, of an inexplicable manner, the fattening pond and insured knowledge of your only, unique and very holy religion; and that, with one so big insurance, that not only I was confirmed there, but he/it seemed me that all those to which I would not speak to of it could doubt some by no means... Oh Lord, I now see it and clearly know: ever you don't abandon the one that searches for you, because you are close to all those that invoke you in truth, and for the multitude of so many kindness, I confess that he/it was impossible that I was sufficiently thankful of it. While burning an ardor of charity that you had imprinted in my heart, I pushed these words outside: "Goods, earth, life and all things are not anything.... All previous considerations were moved mightily to leave the world, but me I could solve there completely...

After have been occupied of the consideration of the course of my future life, and this no without big anxiety and puzzlement of mind, after having had resort to your goodness by continual prayers, and finally after having solved to make celebrate three Mass in honor of the very holy Trinidad, with the intention to implore you that your grace condescended me to fortify to the point to make me abandon the world, you, Lord, called me so clearly to perfection of the religious life that hopeless doubt didn't stay some in my mind. You called me, Lord, with a so clear, manifest and resonant voice, that the functions of my body and my soul stopping operating, I cannot resist one so powerful and so efficient vocation by no means. Because about the midnight, being all alone in my room and raising my mind toward you..., I felt attracted by you, and my mind so full of a sudden supernatural light and my blazing will of one so big fire of charity, that being all out of me, elated of it you, I stayed as all feeling of me and the world having lost, quite delighted over me. To which rapture and aberration of the senses, I knew in a manner so unspeakable your will touch my vocation, that even though an angel had appeared to me visibly to declare it to me, I had not known how to understand it more perfectly, nor to believe it more firmly; so that with a big astonishment marveling me of your goodness and finding me all flaming of the fire of your love, I cannot contain myself, with the elevated arms skywards, to shout while uttering these words: "Oh Lord, who is similar to you? All my bones say: Who is similar to you Lord? "You distilled your liberal hand the dew of the sky so abundantly until the bottom of my soul, that by this means I passed nearly all night long to think about your suavities. And, finding me astonished and loser by the excess of your goodness, I protested, before you and all your celestial court, to abandon this world completely, and to distribute to the poor people, who are your members, everything that I possessed. Of which promise not only I didn't ever repent, but being encouraged besides by your special grace..., I never felt any contrary temptation.

Joseph of the Tremblay 1577-1638

Son of a President of the Room of the Requests to the Parliament of Paris, François The Clerk of the Tremblay first distinguished himself/itself in the career of the weapons. Entered in 1599 at the brothers Minor capuchins, he/it became provincial of Touraine, what gave him the opportunity to be the agent of reconciliation between Marie of Médicises and the Princes. From there dates his/her/its political career: personal adviser of Richelieu, to which he/it should have followed, he/it had a major influence on the foreign politics of Louis XIII. Such a role was not made to reconcile it the mind of the envious nor the Huguenot, and the reputation of the one that one called the gray eminence had to stand some. But the biographers agree to recognize him an eminent virtue and a deep piety: preacher listened and illuminated confessor, full of goodwill for the conversion of the heretics and infidels, he expended much energy with as much ardor to God's service that to the service of his/her/its homeland. One must him two treaties notably: Introduction to the spiritual Life and The seraphic Perfection. Founding of the community of Mount Calvary, he/it wrote for these nuns a Retirement of ten days. The doctrine is sometimes obscure and the language aged somewhat.

THE PURITY OF INTENTION

For the praer, it is necessary that she/it has two conditions: the purity of intention to the beginning, and, in his/her/its progress, perseverance and constancy of good will. There are your mind and prayer. The intention is a begun desire and will is an effect. But you don't tell us - No, because this mind is meditation and affection. And this purity of intention is in all states. Because if you were faithful since the beginning of your prayer, that is this right intention, you would be from then on in the union; and if one persevered there all the prayer, while rejecting what opposes itself of it, one would be in the true mind of Calvary. Not those that go to the prayer by custom, with a mind of concern, and that let themselves carry away voluntarily to the distractions.If an ignorant beginner in the spiritual life and the coarse mind, has nevertheless the desire to make prayer all his/her/its life with this purity of intention and a faithful attention, she/it is pleasing strong to God and benefit to the prayer, bring up the meditation to the adherence, and after, to the union, again that she/it is fought of temptations, of thoughts impure, and other unrests of the imagination and speeches of the understanding, rejecting all it, or the suffering in spite of her, without pleasing itself/themselves of it. She/it stays to table setting in the bottom of the mind by this constant will of there to agree. Again that she/it is beaten of rain or in extreme drought, she/it is in the true mind of Calvary. But the one that goes to the prayer with desire of consolation, to converse and to take pleasure in his/her/its thoughts and curious lights that flatter his/her/its understanding, and to have some ecstasies, she/it is well distant to have this mind. What knows itself enough, bus to the exit of the prayer, she/it doesn't think of it anymore, look for opportunity to laugh, to converse, to speak badly, to judge the some and of the other, doesn't have an attention on his/her/its inside, nor care to produce acts of love and adherence, along the day. This soul is certainly attached by the venial sin of affection, and lack only second-hand to fall to the mortal. Jesus doesn't have anymore in her that a small thread of life. He/it is languid by a deadly illness; this cruel mother, not worrying about him, préfèrera his/her/its least contentment to his/her/its life, having already covered quite it with wounds.

Yves of Paris 1590-1679

In the abundant work of this capuchin mingled with passion to all religious quarrels of his/her/its time, it is necessary to make two parts: one, more popular, that aims to develop the spirituality of the society people; the other, more technical, that applies to specialists of the theology. In the first, that continues the tradition of François saint of Dirty, are located The Christian Gentleman, The Christian Penitent, The Christian Magistrate. To the second, that allies the seraphic mind to the scholastic, belong of the a lot vast works: Natural theology, Christian Morals and especially The Progress of the divine love, his/her/its treaty the most cleanly mystical.

THE CHRISTIAN INDIFFERENCE

';est many to the man to resign itself/themselves to God's wills in all accidents of life, to close the mouth to the complaints, the heart to the sighs, the eyes to the tears when he/it considers that all these events are strokes of the sovereign Providence. It is a lot of to rise the reason, to stop the course of his/her/its useless passions, above to surrender to a strength that one cannot defeat, to follow what otherwise would carry away it and of a necessity to make itself/themselves a merit of it. But if one examines the inside of people well so resigned, one will find the half wills that don't agree to the orders of the Providence there. The one that falls in poverty would like to have some riches; nevertheless, himself seer reduces in state of the power to possess, he pacifies his/its passions, he stops the course of it, but in dry not the source; he escapes the wind that he cannot defeat, he gives what he cannot keep, and his/her/its offers are the homages of a power defeated. Water has a fluidity that wants to spill naturally and, to keep itself/themselves the equality of his/her/its surface, elletâche to go up to the height of his/her/its source; nevertheless, when it is contained in channels, it takes the shape of it and follows the slope of it with a small whisper and a continual disposition to spring outside as soon as it finds the openings of it.

It is a naive face of a will that himself in conformity with the decrees of the Providence with contrary inclinations, however subject, until a favorable business constitution pacifies its complaints and deliver it of his/her/its sufferings... (On the contrary) the man who understood the sizes of this sovereign Majesty where he/it sees all possible perfections collected with eminence well once, adore them and dedicate them all his/her/its desires. The bursts of this infinite goodness fill his/her/its soul that he/it doesn't see anymore on all others objects so that of the clouds and shades that make them unworthy of his/her/its research: he/it sees distinctly that he/it is in a whole dependence of this sovereign mercy, and as he/it only subsists by his/her/its power, he/it doesn't want to want, nor to act qu by his/her/its wills... When the Verb united so to our humanity that it doesn't have another subsistence that the divine, when it always kept him this holy union equal in the fatigues of life, in the rigors of the torments, to the death and the sepulcher, it made us a lesson to attach us to it by a conformity that, in all meetings, erase all interests of the clean love and makes us act only by his/her/its divine wills: & laquo I know how to live in poverty and in abundance & raquo, says the apostle... That I live or that I die, I am always to the Lord: that imports how I appear and with what face, so long as her I am given of his/her/its hand... We also serve it in honor and in the infamy, in the sadness and the consolations, in the applause of the good and the persecution of the mean; the world looks at us as victims that one leads to the death, and however our hearts abound with consolations "...

If the Christian is revived with Christ, as says the apostle, the things of must not touch it here below more; not being anymore in the society of the world, having broken with him, the stingy like stranger, he/it is not more sensitive to his/her/its interests... In some state that he/it is, he/it is God's. He/it is not only in the resignation that submits him wills, because he/it doesn't have some of clean: he/it is like an instrument that only acts as much as his/her/its hand all powerful the pushes..., like a flexible matter, to receive all his/her/its impressions. He/it doesn't want anything of all deadly things, and nevertheless his/her/its will is not vague nor indeterminate, because it wants what it is pleasing to God..: it emancipateitself/themselves almost of all differences, of all annoyances, c57;est to become God, to have more other wills than the Siena. It is therefore comfortable to conclude that indifference is perfected more than the resignation, because the resignation is for a thing and one time; it follows a path of which it cannot divert herself/itself, it yields to strength and bend of fear to break, but indifference gives the whole heart to unreservedly God, it spreads on all times, on all topics; it makes a holocaust of all inclinations of the nature; it sacrifices all half wills, all wishes, all pleasures, all tears that are in the resignation, because it is the big effect of the charity.

Bernardin of Paris toward 1600-1685

A long time main of the beginners, then superior of different convents of his/her/its province, this capuchin reappointed for his/her/its piety let an abundant spiritual work, where it is necessary to distinguish: The Religious interior, the mind of the evangelical Begging and especially the mind of François saint formed on the one of Jesus Christ.

SENSE OF THE CONDEMNATION

It is the admirable privilege of the Saints that Christ is them all in all thing: after being made itself/themselves the consumer of their hope by the love enjoying and by the glory that he/it communicates them in the Sky, he/it enjoys to make itself/themselves again their consumer on the earth by his/her/its suffering love to which he/it calls them. Mount Calvary is the place that his/her/its charity chooses for their last consumption in the order of grace; the Cross in is the altar, and he, between irons and the thorns, is consumed and consume the saints... To make enter them in this total consumption, Christ, on the Cross, is established reason and source of salute for all those that follow it like Pontiff, and he must sacrifice them. It is therefore from the top of the Cross that God's Son, having surrendered the principle and the copy of the purest mind of the gospel, spills on the saints his/her/its love that scorches them, his/her/its mind that fills them of his/her/its arrangements and his/her/its sufferings or his/her/its wounds that consume them with him...As is this in the Cross that God's Son becomes the principle of a new mission of the Holy spirit in the hearts of the saints of the earth, mission very different from the one that he accomplishes in the saints of the glory. The sanctification of just having been started with the grace and by the poverty that stripped them of goods of the earth, and be having to consumed by the sufferings and by the wounds, Christ, of a deep wisdom, dispensation to all saints in an admirable manner the means and the places where they will be consumed. He/it drove on Mount Calvary all his/her/its dearest friends, his/her/its divine Mother, his/her/its beloved holy Jean and his/her/its divine Madeleine amante, he/it has them all consumed of his/her/its suffering love and his/her/its wounds, that they received in their heart. The Apostles, first children of the grace and first copies of the purest mind of the gospel, have been consumed by the love and by the wounds...

It is why God's Son, wanting to associate holy François to the Apostles and to the biggest saints of the church, chooses the mountain of Alverne for the place, the temple and the altar where he/it will be consumed like a victim of holocaust by his/her/its suffering love, by the virtue of his/her/its mind and by the impression of his/her/its wounds. Saint François can exclaim therefore with all saints who are his/her/its brothers and with very Christ: All is consumed! On behalf of Mount Calvary first, because my celestial master cannot communicate a more ardent charity, a mind more pure and more divine, to print me of the holier wounds since these are his that pass him in me. All is consumed of my part: me then to offer him a heart nor more altered of sufferings, nor a more ardent will to suffer, nor a flesh more capable to carry his/her/its wounds. The same love that consumes the Mr. consumes the servant, the wounds that immolate it sacrifice to me, and so ends the consumption of my life in his, for more to live this one only, more to like it that of his/her/its love, and more to endure his/her/its injuries only... & raquo highest point of perfection where the men can be raised is to stop being what they are to become in some manner what God is, because sold of God's hands, they have for end to go back in the heart of the divinity... On Mount Calvary, Christ, to consume the saints, pulls them from them in him as in their chief, so that they exist only by his/her/its graces; of their life in his/her/its death, so that they live only in his/her/its sufferings... It is the big intention of God's Son on François: he/it wants to be his/her/its consumption on the mountain of Alverne by the suffering love, before the being to the Sky by the love enjoying; he/it wants completely to consume it in his/her/its wounds before consuming it in the heart of the Divinity among fires and the flames of the celestial love.

Paul of Lagny toward 1610-1694

He/it is part of this group of authors capuchins of the big century whose style is not always very limpid nor the very original inspiration, but that profess a strong doctrine, established to your time on the mystical tradition and the philosophical distinctions. The father Paul entered to the convent Saint-Jacques in 1630. He/it came back there like master of the beginners after having spent ten years to the missions of Orient. Named then confessor of the nasturtiums of Paris, he/it finished his/its life in the solitude. His/her/its spiritual works that knew the biggest success were: Introduction to the active and contemplative Life, methodical Exercise of the mental prayer, religious Meditations, Path abridged of the Christian Perfection. Bibliography: FATHER PAUL OF LAGNY, The Path abridged of the Christian Perfection, with a note on the author by the Father UBALD OF alençon.

ROLE OF WILL IN THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE

Since the understanding and will are the two main powers of the soul that have been given him of God to walk of an equal step in the ways of the perfection, he/it is certain that it is necessary to make an equal use of one and the other to arrive at the end that we pretend. The bird who only beats a wing won't fly well far nor very high. The soul that doesn't pretend to go to God that by one his/her/its powers won't arrive there ever. The seraphs that the prophet lives on God's throne, used two wings to fly in air and to sustain itself/themselves in the presence of his/her/its divine majesty. The soul that longs for God's holy union must also use his/her/its understanding to contemplate his/her/its divine perfections and of his/her/its will to like it by the holiness of his/her/its works. The two wings help each other to really fly, like the two feet to walk well. In the same way the understanding and will give themselves a mutual help to go to God, one by his/her/its lights, the other by his/her/its ardors. But it is necessary to confess that the understanding receives a lot more aid of will in the supernatural operations (as is the prayer or the divine contemplation) that will doesn't receive some of the understanding. What obliges us to affirm that the state of our prayer follows the state or the disposition of our will customarily for three obvious reasons. The first, because the understanding cannot contemplate God if will is not pure, according to Christ's testimony our Lord who said: & Blissful laquo those that have the pure heart because they will see God & raquo.

To proportion that our will will be purified of all sorts of garbage of the sin, our mind will be arranged more to attend to the holy exercise of the prayer. The second, because the prayer of the Christian must be considered like an elevation of the understanding toward God by the means of the faith. The faith it is the act of the understanding, but controlled by will. Therefore more the human will will be holy, more the faith of the understanding will be pure, and more as the prayer that proceeds from it will be perfected. The third reason, because all merits come of will. It is why, since God gives the graces and lights to the understanding to make good prayer to proportion that will is more or less pleasant to him, it follows that more will is just by conformity to the one of God, the understanding receives as more of light of the skySo one clearly sees that the one that pretends to make the progress in the ways of the mental prayer must first work to purify his/her/its will. After what he/it can insure that the divine grace won't miss him to advance there, according to the disposition of his/her/its same will,

Hyacinth of Amienspremière half of the XVIIe

Scholarly and famous, famous preacher on the other hand for the holiness of his/her/its life, this capuchin wrote in French two works that signal themselves by a heat all seraphic and a rare originality of expression: Picture of a dying soul in Christ's Pains, and Picture of a soul living in Christ's Glory.

THE MYSTICAL DEATH ON THE CROSS

You know, dear suffering, that the inheritance of the blissful souls in the Sky is merely God's glory, and that in the Sky of the church, the inheritance of the Christian, it is the ignominy of the Cross. The Cross is the paradise of the generous souls, which animate of Jesus' blood don't want to live more that to die under the shade of his/her/its signs and flags. It is in this paradise that our thoughts eat, our wills ignite and our hearts consume themselves of love. I implore you today to take place in this paradise and not to look for other sharing in this world that Jesus' Cross. The example that appears you there before the eyes you invites, and beauty, although tarnished by the blackness of blood that froze over, is only too capable to delight you the heart and the affections.

The spouse in the sacred Hymn, delighted of his/her/its wife's beauty, lose temper to the admirations and, can contain itself/themselves more, exclaim in this sort: Ha! that you are beautiful, dear wife, beautiful to my eyes, beautiful to the eyes of all these divine and seraphic minds, beautiful of grace and merit, beautiful of all perfection and incomparable in virtue: because he/it has there nothing on earth, nor in the Sky of the angels, that can equal your beauty; the burst and the brightness that spring of this beautiful face, coming to hit the eyes mildly, dazzle them and make them to eclipse. Would I tell you here that this épithalame of love endures several senses and endure big number of very different explanations? If you are the literal sense, you will find that Salomon, bewilderedly in love, speak to Pharaoh's girl, his/her/its dear mistress, for the beauties of which he/it died a thousand times the day, handing him before the eyes the picture of his/her/its appeals and the features of his/her/its most charming perfections, for no other intention that to delight him the heart and to attract after him his/her/its in love sighs. If you pierce further and that the desire takes you to break the peel of the letter, you will know that it is the Love of our hearts, God's Heart, this chaste Spouse of our souls, who depicts and pencil to the quick the rare excellences of his/her/its wives.

What the spouse assigns to his wife with one thousand features in love that he throws him in the heart, to oblige it to like it, and the same paranymphes that he makes to his/its praise, me then to assign them and to sing them to Jesus' Cross, that is the wife of the martyrs of love and all suffering souls; heightening the voice and doubling my screams in this sort: & laquo Ha! dear Cross, wife of my soul, the friend of my heart, the unique of my desires, that you are beautiful, and that you have relief what is of more excellent above all; beautiful to God's eyes, since he/it died between your arms; beautiful to the eyes of the men and angels, since by you they deserved the grace and the glory; beautiful in your leaves but more beautiful again in your fruits, structural on your sacred branch the fruit of life and the delights of the whole Paradise; admirable Cross that sustains the sky, that governs and govern the world, that pierces until the most hollow of the hell, Cross that germinates the soft fruit of the virtues, that gives life in the deaths and the Paradise to the souls criminal and guilty of the hell; blissful Cross that carries the price and the reward of the suffering souls and that serves them of mirror to suffer well; honorable Cross and suradorable, that act as ornament to all creatures and doesn't find itself one of it only that is enriched of this noble marks since Jesus' death...

For Jesus' Cross, you carry it in several ways and manners. The first, when you are it and come with it, of Jerusalem to Mount Calvary, no as the Jews who only breathed cruelty, but like another Simon (which obeyed to want them, left by strength and left maybe for mercy's sake) gets in to owe to relieve Christ, that he/it saw to expire nearly under the load of one so heavy burden that the one of the Cross. The second way to carry Jesus' Cross, it is when you don't have any eyes anymore that to contemplate his/her/its pains, more arm than to hug it lovingly in this Cross, more heart than to unite it to this crucified Heart, more memory than to think about the painful passion, as well as this holy amante of the Hymn practiced it that didn't have some eyes that to contemplate dying Jesus, of the arms that to hug it lovingly, of heart nor affection that for his/her/its Beloved and to testify him the excess of his/her/its most intimate cordialities: Listen to speak it, and see if you have the eyes, the caresses and affectations that she/it makes to him. My very beloved will stay in my breast like a vessel or bouquet of myrrh & raquo...

It is of what, dear suffering, you must make more state, following this saint's vestiges marries and of these big amateurs of the Cross, not having anything dearer to the world that to have a continual to remember of his/her/its pains and to carry this vessel of myrrh of Jesus' Cross in the most secret of your cSur, or you drink, or you eat, or you take a rest and work, think and reconsider to your expiring love under the heavy burden of the Cross... Since it is necessary to die in the pain, permit, oh soul, before I die, that I make you see what the Heaven can only see in mourning and the crimps on the eyes. Now go from company and let's bring up with Jesus the mountain of Calvary, for there to be crucified with him. Follow therefore, dear suffering, he/it is time to follow your Jesus and to pave the path that the first he/it paved you. I know, and he/it is very certain, that ever you won't arrive after him if you are not it to the track. Alas! that the number is small of those that want to walk on your steps, and however it is not no one that wants to enjoy you. Each knows that in the dextre of your beatitude has some pleasures without number and joys without end; and there is not no one that asks for the enjoyment of your happiness for this reason, but little and nearly no one that speaks about following you or to imitate in the path of your pains. That I am, if he/it pleases you, of this number, and that I follow you her in life and of it death.

Now that I arrived to Mount Calvary with you, make that I stay of it for your love; as well life I am boring and, you seer to die in this place of carrion and stink, I don't want to live more. And it is necessary that I die with you. But before that to expire with you in this place, permit that I make my home, to see there and to contemplate the last act of love, there but most excellent than you ever practiced for the salute of the humans. You say it yourself, that no one can produce no act more excellent of love and charity that the one that gives his/her/its soul and his/her/its life for his/her/its friends; you give here, my Savior, and the soul and life, not only for your friends, but for your enemies and for those that attach you to the Cross.

Hey! you will ever make me the grace, my Jesus, that this heart splits itself in two, and that, faltering to all other love, I expire between your arms? I looked soon everywhere for you, now that I arrived instead where you returned the last sighs, make that I find you there and that I don't look more elsewhere for you; make if he/it pleases you that I die there for you that died for me. Ha! It is enough, holy Love, to like the creatures; it is enough, pull me after you, not to like more Ever than you. No, I don't want to live more, I want to die; as well my life having died, it is not more possible to live; you are my life, and having lost you, it is necessary that I die and that I don't live anymore; hey! of grace, that this Calvary is the place of my burial, that it is here where I abandon my mind between your hands and that this place acts as crock to receive the ashes of a dying poor that die of languor if it doesn't exhale your love. I don't ask besides for anything in this life, otherwise to be attached to the Cross with you. I don't want to live more that to die: or the bodily death, my Jesus, or print in this heart your death. Ha! unhappy that I am, why was I born, otherwise to kiss you and to give you one thousand kissing in love, dying in this Cross? Why live longer, otherwise to expire in these wounds? Ha! than gladly, holy Love, I would rather choose the death, and to be crucified to your feet that to enjoy delights of the Paradise. I let to your angels and celestial minds the enjoyment of this happiness and for me, I don't ask now for other happiness that to die between your arms and that to bury the soul, and life, and everything that I follow in 'the sacred coffin of your in love injuries; at less make me this favor. If you only want I die all of a sudden and that life I am delighted by dint of liking and to suffer while liking, that I like you at least without relaxation, and that languid of love and pain, I finished my days in this languor, to have separated never of you, nor in life, nor of it her death, you that are all my glory and happiness in the time and in the eternity of the centuries. So either himPreacher of missions, this capuchin had the reputation, because of the power and the stamp of his/her/its voice, of & laquo to break the ears & raquo, but also, raised Louis X[V," to melt the hearts & raquo. Indeed, the tribune tried above all to reveal to the souls the divine intimacy, and was all his/her/its life a zealous propagator of the prayer. One must him a Régime of spiritual Life, a Practice of the mental prayer, and a missionary treaty notably: Very useful manner to really make the general Confession.

CONDUCTED IN THE DROUGHT AND THE DISTRACTIONS

He/it is plainer to the souls that take to the prayer to be there without taste that with sweets, and God makes it to purify them and to make die them to themselves; it is necessary that they put for foundation that the way of darkness and droughts is surer and consolidates a soul more in the virtue that the way of lights and consolations, and the reason is that the first of this two ways fact that the soul comes out of herself to become attached solely to his/her/its God and that it often goes back in herself by the second to please itself/themselves of it; and so, instead of advancing to go to God, it moves away from it. It is comfortable to judge some by the effects, because the souls that are driven of God by the ways of ténèbre and the spiritual droughts, are humbler and firmer in the virtue, their passions are mortified more, and when he/it is pleasing to God to give them some sweetness, they pull all fruits that one can hope for some of it.

On the contrary, those that are driven by these ways of light and consolation are filled of good esteem of them same, they leave the practice of the virtue comfortably, they have the quickest passions, and when they fall in darkness or in the aridity, they are all sorry, annoy and without any support. Suppose these principles, he/it is not well anything more comfortable than of himself to govern in darkness and in the droughts. It is necessary to prepare itself/themselves of it as to the conduct plainer of God on the souls, there to look always at God's will that one must like more that all consolations of the earth, and even of the sky; and by a feeling of humility to persuade itself/themselves that our disloyalties to the grace make us unworthy of the sweets that there is attached. Continuing thus to make his/her/its prayer in this double mind of humility and resignation, one will make the best prayer that one can make. Because that does one pretend in the prayer? It is to take the generous resolutions, to strip itself/themselves of all things and myself, to become attached to only God, there. And it is what one makes in the prayer that is accompanied by drought and darkness when one perseveres there with fidelity.

Chrysostome of Saint-Lô1594 1646

This religious, that one could name the father of the Norman mystical school of the XVIIe century, belonged to the community of the Tertiary regulars said of Picpus, of which he/it was provincial and general définiteur. Founding of the Saint Abjectness tt Company Him, he/it exercised a deep influence on saint Jean Eudes, Jean of Bernières, Mechtilde of the Saint-Sacrament, and of other mystics or spiritual writers. He/it wrote a certain number of opuscules whose doctrine made it arrange among the pre-quiétistes tt - Mention among others: Treated of the holy Abjectness, The Devotion of Jesus' holy Agony, Solitude of ten days to acquire the pure Love and especially The Désoccupation of the Creatures.

THE UNION TO JESUS CRUCIFIÉ

The union with God is useful and necessary beyond everything that one can imagine, since it is our all for our justification and for our salute; in the same way the union with Our Lord Jesus Christ crucified us the East in a singular way, because it is on the Cross that it drew the secret of our predestination mainly, that it got our conversion, that it impetrated our justification, that it deserved us all grants that we will ever have, that it negotiated, finished and insured all the business of our salute; it is why the link that we have with it in this mystery depends all our happiness... God's big servant, having accommodated all his/her/its life in the Heart of Jesus crucified and put his/her/its hope in his/her/its divine wounds, also believed that he/it had to draw in this source in love all his/her/its contentment and his/her/its happiness: being himself to this effect so long as of a crucifix and having put it on a religiously decorated oratory, he/it used all his/her/its cares to return him all duties of a perfect courtier of the sky and to pull the advantages of it that one can wait for a faithful and in love service... His/her/its plain shelter was his/her/its crucifix. If the temptation surprised it out of his/her/its lodgings, it had accustomed his/its soul to fly like a dove in the holes of this stone as soon as it saw the infernal vulture; incoming long before soon in the one of the feet or hands, it found so much sweets there, so many things to consider and to like, that it felt his/its detached heart of all other object... He/it not only found in the merits of the crucifix the help and strength, but also in his/her/its exemple,prenant the crucifix like a beautiful mirror or sometimes considering the extremity of the contempt - the scarcity, the nudity and the abandonment; of other times the pain and she/it even died, he/it learned to fight the temptations of the sadness, lust, the vanities and the pleasures...

If he/it perceived to have failed in something, he/it was goi