In the library of Secret Harbour is the treatise titled: ‘Alloquia Iesu Christi ad Animam Fidelem’ by Johannes Justus von Landsberg, a German-born Carthusian monk and ascetical writer. He is perhaps best known by the Latin name of Lanspergius. As the title suggests, the treatise was written in Latin and was first published in the year 1610. It is written in such a way that it seems as if Our Lord Himself had written it. Certainly it comes to us from a soul that was very close to Christ. Any disciple of Jesus should certainly feel called to an examination of one’s own walk with Our Saviour. Much of this will be shared here at Secret Harbour. Here is the first instalment.You should be an example to others, and your life an instruction to those that go astray. The sweet favour of your good conversation ought to be a wholesome medicine for the curing of such as are weakened with the infection of sin, and your words as a consuming fire, to inflame the hearts of those that hear them.
But now you are yourself so corrupted with the desire of childish vanities, so busied with a multitude of unprofitable matters, and so subject to many hurtful passions, as you are distracted in your soul, and have very much polluted it with filthiness, as it is possessed with wandering thoughts and vain imaginations. Self-love reigns in you and until you mortify that, you can never enter into My chamber, or be a partaker of My delights. Thus you, who ought to teach others, stand now in need of being taught yourself.
I write this not to an end that I intend to reject you, but because I would let you know how far you have erred, and I am desirous that you should understand your own loss and danger; and I do not only allure you, but I also urge you forward to return from there, home again unto Me.
