BLESSED JAN VAN RUYSBROEK ~ ‘The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage’ – Chapter V & VI – ‘OF PATIENT ENDURANCE’ & ‘OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST’ - pages 33-36
[BLESSED JAN VAN RUYSBROEK – XIII-XIV Century AD; Ruisbroek, Holy Roman Empire/ Groenendael, Holy Roman Empire; Mystic, Spiritual Writer, Doctor Divinus Ecstaticus]“Chapter V ~ OF PATIENT ENDURANCE
The third point is patient endurance. We should mark this point carefully, for it adorned Christ our Bridegroom all His life. For His sufferings began very early, as soon as He was born; they began with poverty and cold. Then He was circumcised and shed His blood; He was driven to a strange country; He served the lord Joseph and His mother; He suffered hunger and thirst, shame and contempt, the vile words and works of the Jews. He fasted, He watched, and He was tempted by the devil. He was subject to all men; He wandered from country to country, from town to town, with much labour and great zeal, that He might preach the Gospel.
At last He was taken prisoner by the Jews, who were His enemies, though He was their friend. He was betrayed, mocked and insulted, scourged and buffeted, and condemned by false witness. He bore His cross with great pains up to the highest point of the land. He was stripped stark naked. So fair a body neither man nor woman ever saw so cruelly ill-used. He suffered shame, and anguish, and cold, before all the world: for He was naked, and it was cold, and a searching wind cut into His wounds. He was nailed to the wood of the cross with blunt nails, and so stretched out that His veins were torn asunder. He was lifted up and then flung down, and because of the blow His wounds began to bleed again. His head was crowned with thorns; His ears heard the Jews cry in their fury: Crucify Him, Crucify Him, with many other wicked words. His eyes saw the hardness and malice of the Jews, and the anguish of His mother. And His eyes overflowed with the bitterness of sorrow and death; His nose smelt the filth which the Jews spat out of their mouths into His face; His mouth and tongue dripped with vinegar mingled with gall, and every sensitive part of His body had been wounded by the scourge.
Christ our Bridegroom, wounded to the death, forsaken by God and by all creatures, dying on the cross, hanging like a log for which no one cared, save Mary, His poor mother, who could not help Him!
Christ also suffered spiritually, in His soul, because of the hardened hearts of the Jews and of those who were putting Him to death; for whatever signs and wonders they saw, they remained in their wickedness. And He suffered because of their corruption and because of the vengeance that would come on them for His death; for He knew that God would avenge it on them, body and soul. Also He suffered from the distress and anguish of His mother and His disciples, who were in great affliction. And He suffered still more, because His death would be of no profit to so many men, and because of the ingratitude of man and because of the false oaths which many would swear, reviling and blaspheming Him Who had died out of love for us all. And also His bodily nature and His lower reason suffered, because God had withdrawn the inflow of His grace and of His comfort, and had left them alone in such distress. And of this Christ complained, exclaiming: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? But as to all His sufferings our Lover was silent; and cried to His Father saying: Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing. And Christ was heard by His Father because of His reverence; for those who acted from ignorance were soon afterwards converted.
These then were Christ's inward virtues: humility, charity, and patient endurance. These three virtues Christ our Bridegroom practised all His life, and He died with them, and paid our debt according to justice. And of His generosity He has opened His side. From there flow out the rivers of well-being and the sacraments of bliss.
And He has ascended in power, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and reigns in eternity.
This is the first coming of our Bridegroom, and it is wholly past.
Chapter VI ~ OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST
The second coming of Christ our Bridegroom takes place every day within good men; often and many times, with new graces and gifts, in all those who make themselves ready for it, each according to his power. We do not speak here of a man's first conversion, or of the first grace which was given to him when he turned from sin to virtue. But we speak of an increase of new gifts and new virtues from day to day, and of the present coming of Christ our Bridegroom which takes place daily within our souls.
Now we must consider the reason, the way and the working of this coming. Its reason is fourfold: God's mercy and our destitution, God's generosity and our desire. These four things cause the growth of virtue and of nobility.
Now understand this: when the sun sends its beams and its radiance into a deep valley between two high mountains, and when it is overhead can yet shine on the bottom of the valley, then three things happen: the valley becomes full of light by reflection from the mountains, and it receives more heat, and becomes more fruitful, than the plain and level country. Likewise, when a good man takes his stand on his own littleness, in the most lowly part of himself, and confesses and knows that he has nothing, and is nothing, and can nothing, of himself, neither stand still nor go on, and when he sees how often he fails in virtues and good works: then he confesses his poverty and his helplessness, then he makes a valley of humility. And when he is thus humble, and needy, and knows his own need, he lays his distress, and complains of it, before the goodness and mercy of God. And so he marks the height of God and his own lowness; and he becomes a deep valley. And Christ is a Sun of righteousness and also of mercy, Who stands in the highest part of the firmament, that is, on the right hand of the Father, and from there He shines into the bottom of the humble heart; for Christ is always moved by helplessness, whenever a man complains of it and lays it before Him with humility. Then two mountains arise, that is, two desires; one to serve God and praise Him with reverence, the other to attain noble virtues. Those two mountains are higher than the heavens, for these longings touch God without intermediary, and crave His ungrudging generosity. And then that generosity cannot withhold itself, it must flow forth; for then the soul is made ready to receive, and to hold, more gifts.
These are the reason and the way of the new coming with new virtues. Then, this valley, the humble heart, receives three things: it becomes more radiant and enlightened by grace, it becomes more ardent in charity, and it becomes more fruitful in perfect virtues and in good works. And thus you have the reason, the way, and the work of this coming.”
Image: Coppo di Marcovaldo ~ ‘Madonna, (Virgin in Majesty)’, 1250-60, Santa Maria Maggiore, Florence, Italy