Praying with St. John of the Cross
in the Holy Land
Nazareth
Let us worship such a great wonder fulfilled when Mary acquiesced to the Trinity ! Teach us Mary to answer Yes to God.
Then He called The archangel Gabriel
And sent him to The virgin Mary,
At whose consent The mystery was wrought,
In whom the Trinity
Clothed the Word with flesh.
Romance 8: 1-2
Bethlehem
Let us worship Jesus our Saviour who brings life and joy
to the mankind of all times.
But God there in the manger
Cried and moaned;
The Mother gazed in sheer wonder
On such an exchange: In God, man's weeping,
And in man, gladness,
To the one and the other
Things usually so strange.
Romance 9: 4-6
Jerusalem
Let us worship Jesus, who saves the world by His love, His meekness and total gift of Himself. O Jesus give to our hearts new life in You, accord us to respond to your love, teach us to love without limits.
At the moment of His death Christ was certainly annihilated in His soul, without any consolation or relief, since the Father left Him that way in innermost aridity in the lower part. He was thereby compelled to cry out:
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
By this He accomplished the most marvelous work of His whole life, surpassing all the works and deeds and miracles that He had ever performed on earth or in heaven.
That is, He brought about the reconciliation and union of the human race with God through grace.
II A 7: 11
The Mount Carmel
Draw me Lord in your footsteps, let us run. Delicate is the fragrance of your perfume. Sg. 1: 4.3
He who walks in the love of God seeks neither his own gain nor his reward, but only to lose all things and himself for God; and this loss he judges to be his gain. And thus it is as St. Paul asserts: My death for Christ is the spiritual gain of all things and of myself (Phil. 1: 21 )
And consequently the soul declares: I was found.
He who does not know how to lose himself, does not find himself, but rather loses himself, as Our Lord teaches in the Gospel:
He who desires to gain his soul shall lose it,
and he who loses it for My sake shall gain it (Mt. 16: 25 )
C. 29: 11
