On the Interior of Jesus Christ

"Let this mind be in you; which was also in Jesus Christ." - Saint Paul to the Philippians

By the "interior" of Jesus Christ, we mean the secret dispositions of His soul, which were the principle and rule of His whole life. It is these interior dispositions which give a value to all actions, in which the holiness of these actions consists, and which make an extreme difference in the very same actions according to the degree of purity of intention and elevation of motive which influence them. If Jesus Christ is the model for all Christians in His exterior conduct, far more is He so in the interior dispositions of His Sacred Heart; therefore, the most important occupation of our lives should be to study them, to apply them to ourselves, and to endeavour as far as we can to imitate them.

We will now consider the interior dispositions of Jesus Christ, with regard to His Eternal Father, with regard to Himself, and with regard to men.

With regard to His Father, He always looked upon Himself as a Victim, destined to repair His Father's glory, and to appease His justice. The very instant He came into the world, as Saint Paul says, He offered Himself as a Victim, in place of the victims of the Old Law, which were only the shadows and the types of His one perfect Sacrifice, and every moment of His life He persevered in this oblation of Himself. The cross was the consummation of His Sacrifice, but His cradle was the beginning of it, and the whole course of his life only the continuation of it. Thus the disposition of Jesus Christ towards His Father was one of continual self-immolation.

Hence came His perfect submission to the will of His Father. He never wished for anything of Himself, He never desired anything, or wished to follow His own will in anything, incapable as He was of wishing anything that was not good. He said of Himself, "My meat is to do the will of My Father" And He did it, without interruption, from His birth to His last breath on the cross: He did it in things most painful and fearful to His human nature; He did it with a joy and an ardour, a generosity and an alacrity, which were inexpressible.

Hence came also that constant dependence upon Divine grace which was always so great in Jesus Christ, so that His soul only acted to second the action of God, and was always in the hands of His Father a most pliable and obedient instrument.

Hence came His great zeal for the glory of His Father a zeal which dried Him up, which consumed Him, which devoured Him. Hence came His inexpressible love, His continual prayer, the absorption of all the powers of His soul in the Divinity of God, His burning thirst for sufferings, His continual desire for the consummation of His Sacrifice. He said of Himself, 'I am to be baptized with a baptism of blood: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?'

Now with regard to Himself: the humility of Jesus Christ, His self-abnegation, were carried to an extent that was prodigious; the word annihilation is not sufficient to express the state of His soul in this respect. He looked upon Himself as loaded with all the sins of the universe, and as deserving only of all the blows of Divine justice. Nevertheless, His Sacred Humanity was holy with the very holiness of the Word of God, Who was personally united to Him. Who can conceive and who can reconcile the union of a holiness so perfect with those humble ideas of Himself?

Let us judge, after all this, if ever during His mortal life He desired that His Father should glorify Him, if He ever sought after heavenly favours, if He ever wished for the esteem of men, or took glory to Himself for His virtues and His miracles. Jesus Christ never desired anything for Himself worthy of Himself but contempt, humiliation and suffering; He did not think Himself worthy of anything else. He declared by the mouth of His prophet, "I am a worm and no man; I am the scorn of men, and the outcast of the people" He never wished for anything in this world from God but to bear the weight of His anger, and to satisfy His justice by the total destruction of His own being.

Now, with regard to men, the spirit of Jesus Christ was a spirit of love and sweetness, a spirit of peace and union, a spirit of help and condescension, a most tender compassion for sinners, even for those who spoke against Him, who insulted Him, and who wished for His death. He shed His blood, in desire for the salvation of all men, every moment of His life; and, if there had been only one man to redeem, He would have willingly given His life for that one man; and in very truth He did suffer, He did satisfy, He did die for each individual man. He said of Himself, " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." But He did infinitely more He laid down His life for His enemies. And not content with giving His life, He gave His soul; He consented, as Saint Paul tells us, to be for them and for their sakes an object of malediction, to be treated by God not only as a sinner, but as if He were sin itself. Such was the extent of the charity of Jesus Christ for us. To die, by the hands of men, in a most cruel and ignominious punishment, was perhaps not so much; but to die in His soul, by the hands of God, to feel in His soul that He was forsaken by God, to feel the anger of God and the curse of God inasmuch as He bore the sins of all men this was a sacrifice of which only God made Man was capable.

The interior of Jesus Christ may then be reduced to three points, which embrace everything: the spirit of sacrifice, the spirit of humility, the spirit of love; but a sacrifice, a humility, and a love carried as far as it was possible to carry them by a Man enlightened by all the light, animated by all the feelings, sustained by all the strength of His Divine nature. This is what ravishes with admiration for ever the intelligences of the angels and the souls of the saints!

But how can we possibly venture to express in ourselves such sublime dispositions? We can only do it in one way, and that a very simple way: by the union of our whole soul with God. This union in Jesus Christ was a hypostatic union: in us it can only be a moral union, and consequently an incomparably inferior one; but this union with God, although so inferior, is capable of producing in us the fruits of the most eminent holiness.

What must we do, then, to unite ourselves with God? We must desire this union; we must give ourselves generously to God; we must depend entirely and perfectly upon His grace. Our only desire must be precisely and solely what God desires: which means no less than a total abandonment of ourselves and all our interests to the care of God.

When this gift of ourselves is once made, there is nothing more to do but to allow God to act in us, and to correspond faithfully with His action. He will by degrees enlighten our understanding with His heavenly light; and then we shall see everything as He sees it, and He will teach us to judge all things as He judges them. He will infuse into our will His love, His strength, His ideas. He will dispose as He pleases of all the events of our lives, and will Himself place us in the circumstances which are most proper for the exercise of all the virtues He expects from us and for the accomplishment of His designs for us.

But if we wish to receive in ourselves this light from God, it is quite certain that we must renounce the light of our own mere reason; and one of our most constant prayers must be to ask of God that He will first blind us and then give us His own light. If we wish to receive His love into our hearts, it is evident that we must banish self-love from them; for self-love concentrates all our attention upon ourselves, and Divine love makes us come out of ourselves to be concentrated and lost in God. Now self-love is always trying to infect with its venom all our affections, all our most secret desires, even those of eternal happiness. It is therefore necessary that Divine love should purify all our desires, and should take away from them all self-interest, to leave them only concerned with the interests of God.

If we wish to receive the strength of God, we must despoil ourselves of our own strength, or rather of what we imagine to be our strength, for in reality we have no strength at all for the practice of any supernatural good. Thus we must willingly consent to feel continually our weakness and want of power, that so the efficacy of Divine grace may alone strengthen us. The stronger we are in God, the weaker we become in ourselves; and when the feeling of our own strength is utterly annihilated, the Divine strength will display itself in us in all its virtue, without finding any obstacle on our part.

If we wish to leave to God the disposal of all the events of our life, we must wish for nothing, foresee nothing, make no plans for the future, but remain calmly and peacefully where God places us, and take no other measures than those which we feel plainly are His will.

A perfect union with God embraces all that I have just said, and it extends to all our free actions without exception, whether interior or exterior. And if we are united to God, we shall have all the dispositions of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, and God Himself will guide all the events of our lives as He guided those of Jesus Christ. Then we shall resemble our Lord Jesus as much as is possible for us to resemble Him, and we shall attain in this life to the degree of sanctity which God wishes for us. Amen.

- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou