Revelations of Divine Love · 29 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter XXII-a
"The Love that made Him to suffer passeth so far all His Pains as Heaven is above Earth" Then said our good Lord Jesus Christ: Art thou well pleased that I suffered for thee?
I said: Yea, good Lord, I thank Thee; Yea, good Lord, blessed mayst Thou be.
Then said Jesus, our kind Lord: If thou art pleased, I am pleased: it is a joy, a bliss, an endless satisfying to me that ever suffered I Passion for thee; and if I might suffer more, I would suffer more.
In this feeling my understanding was lifted up into Heaven, and there I saw three heavens: of which sight I marvelled greatly.
And though I see three heavens—and all in the blessed manhood of Christ—none is more, none is less, none is higher, none is lower, but [they are] even-like in bliss.
For the First Heaven, Christ shewed me His Father; in no bodily likeness, but in His property and in His working.
That is to say, I saw in Christ that the Father is.
The working of the Father is this, that He giveth meed to His Son Jesus Christ.
This gift and this meed is so blissful to Jesus that His Father might have given Him no meed that might have pleased Him better.
The first heaven, that is the pleasing of the Father, shewed to me as one heaven; and it was full blissful: for He is full pleased with all the deeds that Jesus hath done about our salvation.
Wherefore we be not only His by His buying, but also by the courteous gift of His Father we be His bliss, we be His meed, we be His worship, we be His crown.
(And this was a singular marvel and a full delectable beholding, that we be His crown!) This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setteth at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.
And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more ,—I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would , and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it.
And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might.
And verily the number passed mine understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it.
And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seemeth Him but little in regard of His love.
For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be.
For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail.
But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature's reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man's soul, as to my sight.
Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?
And here saw I, for the Second Beholding in this blessed Passion the love that made Him to suffer passeth as far all His pains as Heaven is above Earth.
For the pains was a noble, worshipful deed done in a time by the working of love: but Love was without beginning, is, and shall be without ending.
The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.
The text centers on the reciprocal love between the devotee and Christ, where Jesus's suffering is an act of devotion and the human response is one of grateful surrender.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The passage details the Father's active 'working' of giving a meed to the Son and the Son's deliberate choice to suffer for salvation, indicating an ordered divine plan.
The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.
The visionary experiences a profound merging of wills ('If thou art pleased, I am pleased') and sees humanity as Christ's 'bliss' and 'crown,' indicating a deep ontological union.
Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.
The text presents the paradox that Christ's suffering is a source of 'endless satisfying' and joy, and that he would willingly die an infinite number of times.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text explicitly states that humanity is Christ's 'bliss,' 'meed,' and 'crown,' suggesting a transformation where humans participate in the divine nature and glory.