Today at Matins the Carthusians reflected on these words from Blessed Guerric of Igny:If you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will be saved.
Jesus, my God, is still alive! On hearing it my spirit, which was asleep through timidity, has revived. For the joyful voice of this happy message raises even from death those buried deep in sin. Otherwise, if Christ, coming up from hell, left them there in the depths, there would certainly be no hope for them; their fate would be buried in forgetfulness.
By this token you may clearly know that your soul lives again fully in Christ if it echoes this sentiment: ‘It is enough for me that Jesus is still alive’. How faithful and worthy of a friend of Jesus is that voice, how pure that act of love which says: ‘It is enough for me that Jesus is still alive. If He lives, I live, for my spirit acts through His. Yes, He is my life, my All in all. For what can I lack if Jesus is still alive? While everything else may be taken from me, nothing else matters to me so long as He lives. If He wishes then, let Him take no account of me. It is enough for me that He still lives even if He only lives for Himself’.
When the love of Christ so absorbs all a man's affections that, unmindful and forgetful of himself, he has no feeling for anything but Jesus Christ and what pertains to Him then, I say, love has been made perfect in him.
To a man who so loves, poverty is no burden, he feels no hurt, laughs at insults, disdains misfortunes, considers death as a gain. In fact he does not think in terms of death, knowing that he passes from death to life.
Jesus, my God, is still alive! On hearing it my spirit, which was asleep through timidity, has revived. For the joyful voice of this happy message raises even from death those buried deep in sin. Otherwise, if Christ, coming up from hell, left them there in the depths, there would certainly be no hope for them; their fate would be buried in forgetfulness.
By this token you may clearly know that your soul lives again fully in Christ if it echoes this sentiment: ‘It is enough for me that Jesus is still alive’. How faithful and worthy of a friend of Jesus is that voice, how pure that act of love which says: ‘It is enough for me that Jesus is still alive. If He lives, I live, for my spirit acts through His. Yes, He is my life, my All in all. For what can I lack if Jesus is still alive? While everything else may be taken from me, nothing else matters to me so long as He lives. If He wishes then, let Him take no account of me. It is enough for me that He still lives even if He only lives for Himself’.
When the love of Christ so absorbs all a man's affections that, unmindful and forgetful of himself, he has no feeling for anything but Jesus Christ and what pertains to Him then, I say, love has been made perfect in him.
To a man who so loves, poverty is no burden, he feels no hurt, laughs at insults, disdains misfortunes, considers death as a gain. In fact he does not think in terms of death, knowing that he passes from death to life.
