Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle was born in 1575 near Champagne. Educated by Jesuits, he attended the Sorbonne in Paris and was ordained in 1599. With the help of his cousin, Bl. Marie of the Incarnation, he introduced the Discalced Carmelites into France, following the reform of St. Teresa de Ávila. He became spiritual director of St. Vincent de Paul and friends with St. Francis de Sales. In 1611, he founded the Oratory of Jesus (see "Humani generis / Cessent suspiria"). Along with his religious work, he was also a statesman, assisting King Henry IV and King Louis XIII. He became a cardinal in 1627, but died in 1629 before receiving the red hat. The below text is from his collection Works of Piety, #21.
Jesus ought to be received as a gift, and a gift of God, and a gift which is God Himself. For, as He is God from God, and He is a gift of God, being given by God from Whom He proceeds, He is a gift of such grand eminence and dignity, that He is a gift and God all together. He is, thus, also given by God, which marks His origin and His procession; and a gift of God, which marks His essence and His divinity: Si scires donum Dei [If you knew the gift of God] (Jn 4:10): but He is a gift which we ought to receive, and a gift to which it is necessary for us to give and deliver ourselves.
I adore You, then, and receive You, O Jesus, as given by God the Father, as arising from Him by Your origin, as emanating from Him, equal to Him and given by Him, such as You are, that is to say, as equal to Him. I receive You as giving Yourself: for You are both in conformity and in unity of will and of operation, with the Father, in Your divine Being. I receive You, and I receive, in You and with You, the Father Himself Who gives You. For He is inseparable from You, and, giving in You, He gives Himself through the bond of love and of unity which He has with You, which renders Him inseparable from You through a unity of spirit, of essence, and of love. I regard and love You as Him; and His love, as well as His essence, joins Him to You, and He is and wills to be with You.
He even gives You, not only as emanating from Him, but also as producing, through Him and with Him, the Holy Spirit, in the order of the Holy Trinity, and You want to produce in us this same Spirit, in giving Yourself to us. Thus You give Yourself and He gives You to us, as a gift living and performing; living with a life so high, as it is the life which reigns in the order of the Most Holy Trinity; and as performing a thing so high and so divine, as the production of a divine Person, Who fills and terminates the admirable fecundity of the Divinity. [1]
O gift! O life! O operation! O Father! O Son! O Holy Spirit! But as the gift of the Father is so worthy and so excellent, the manner of giving it is ineffable. For He gives it through a new mystery, which passes the order of nature, of grace, and of glory, [2] which is the mystery of the Incarnation, a mystery unique and singular, but which imitates the divine unity and fecundity; for, in His unity, He has one extent and communication over all men and over even the angels; a mystery infinite in grandeur and in abasement, in dignity and in vilification, in power and in powerlessness, in life and in death. I give myself to You, in all the ways of acting which I can have from You and do, which You want to have from me, in me, and through me.
Footnotes: [1] Bérulle views God as necessarily fruitful: one thinks of the Scholastic adage, "The good is diffusive of itself" (Bonum est diffusivum sui). This fruitfulness, or fecundity, is seen in the Trinity: the Father begets the Son, and the Spirit proceeds from both Father and Son. Being the last of the divine Persons, the Spirit is "terminates the admirable fecundity of the Divinity." Bérulle also argues that, since this Trinitarian fecundity ends in the Spirit, and the Spirit, as God, must be fecund Himself, the Spirit is "sterile" within the Trinity and fecund outside, both through assisting in the creation of the world and in assisting in the Incarnation, thus, in a way, helping generate a divine Person (Christ), like the other members of the Trinity: "As the fecundity of God in God Himself is terminated in a divine person, so the fecundity of the Holy Spirit outside of Himself tends to the production of a God pre-existing (O strange marvel!) and henceforth existing in a new nature." See Bérulle, Discourses on the State and on the Grandeurs of Jesus IV.2, in Œuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 209. This topic is treated further in my unpublished paper, "The Sterility of the Spirit and Fitness in Theology."
[2] These three orders are key to Bérulle's thought; the order of nature is, of course, "the material and sensible world," the order of grace is "the Church in this world...a new earth...a new world," and the order of glory is heaven, which includes both the saints and the angels. See Bérulle, Works of Controversy I.22 in Œuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 670.
Source: Œuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 945-946.