On Cleaving to God - Chapter 10

That one should not be concerned about feeling tangible devotion so much as about cleaving to God with one’s will

Please note:

It is helpful to note that while St. Albert wrote this text for professed religious, particularly Dominican friars, the work contains wisdom applicable to all Christians seeking holiness. References to religious vows point to the original audience, but the central themes of detachment from worldly things and contemplation of the divine are universal. All baptized followers of Christ, whether clergy, religious, or laity, are called to turn from sin and cling to God alone in prayer and devotion. St. Albert provides invaluable guidance for this journey toward sanctity.

Furthermore you should not be much concerned about tangible devotion, the experience of sweetness or tears, but rather that you should be mentally united with God within yourself by a good will in your intellect.

For what pleases God above everything is a mind free from imaginations, that is images, ideas and the representations of created things. It befits a monk to be indifferent to everything created so that he can turn easily and barely to God alone within himself, be empty for him and cleave to him.

For this reason deny yourself so that you can follow Christ, the Lord your God, in nakedness, who was himself poor, obedient, chaste, humble and suffering, and in whose life and death many were scandalized, as is clear from the Gospel accounts. After all, a soul which is separated from the body pays no attention to what is done to its abandoned body - whether it is burned, hanged, or reviled, and is in no way saddened by the afflictions imposed on the body, but thinks only of the Now of eternity and the One Thing which the Lord calls necessary in the Gospel. So you too should treat your body as if you were no longer in the body, but think always of the eternity of your soul in God, and direct your thoughts carefully to that One Thing of which Christ said, For one thing is necessary. (Luke 10.42)

You will experience because of it great grace, helping you towards the acquisition of nakedness of mind and simplicity of heart. Indeed this One Thing is very much present with you if you have made yourself bare of imaginations and all other entanglements, and you will soon experience that this is so - namely when you can be empty and cleave to God with a naked and resolute mind. In this way you will remain unconquered in whatever may be inflicted on you, like the holy martyrs, fathers, the elect, and indeed all the saints who despised everything and only thought of their souls’ security and eternity in God.

Armed in this way within, and united to God through a good will, they spurned everything of the world as if their souls were already separated from their bodies. Consider from this how much a good will united with God is capable of, when by means of its pressing towards God the soul is effectively separated the body in spirit and looks on its outward man as it were from a distance, and as not belonging to it. In this way it despises everything that is inflicted on itself or on its flesh as if they were happening to someone else, or not to a human being at all.

For He that is united with the Lord is one Spirit, (1 Corinthians 6.17) that is with him. So you should never dare to think or imagine anything before the Lord your God that you would blush to be heard or seen in before men, since your respect for God should be even greater than for them. It is a matter of justice in fact that all your thoughts and thinking should be raised to God alone, and the highest point of your mind should only be directed to him as if nothing existed but him, and holding to him may enjoy the perfect beginning of the life to come.

From a Letter of St. Catherine of Siena

Embrace Jesus on the Cross, loving and beloved 

"Dearest sister in Jesus. I, Catherine, servant of the servants of Jesus, write to you in His Precious Blood, wishing only that you feed yourself with God’s love and nourish yourself with it as at a mother’s breast. Nobody in fact can live without this milk!

Who possesses God’s love, finds so much joy that every bitterness transforms itself into sweetness, and that every great weight becomes light. One must not be astonished because living in charity you live in God:

“God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God abides in him”(1 John 4:16)

Thus, living in God you can have no bitterness because God is delight, gentleness and never-ending joy!

This is why God’s friends are always happy! Even if we are sick, poor, grieved, troubled, persecuted, we are always joyful.

Even if all the gossiping tongues were to set us in a bad light we would not worry; we rejoice and are delighted by all things because we live in God, our rest, and we taste the milk of his love. As a child who sucks the milk from his mother’s breast, likewise we, in love with God, draw love from Jesus crucified, always following His footsteps and walking with Him on the path of humiliation, pain and insults.

We do not seek joy elsewhere than in Jesus and we avoid any glory which is not that of the Cross.

Embrace, then, Jesus crucified, raising to Him the eyes of your desire! Consider His burning love for you, which made Jesus pour out His blood from every part of His body!

Embrace Jesus crucified, loving and beloved, and in him you will find true life because He is God made man. Let your heart and your soul burn with the fire of love drawn from Jesus on the Cross!

You must, then, become love, looking at God’s love who loved you so much not because He had any obligation towards you but out of pure gift, urged only by His ineffable love. 

You will have no other desire than to follow Jesus! As if you were drunken with Love, it will no longer matter whether you are alone or in company: do not think about many things, but only about finding Jesus and following Him!

Run, Bartolomea, do not stay asleep, because time flies and does not wait one moment!

Dwell in God’s sweet love.

Sweet Jesus, Jesus love."

From the “Letters” of St Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380) (letter no. 165 to Bartolomea, wife of Salviato of Lucca).