God, Jesus, and Mary are Life and Source of Life
By Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629)
Introduction
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, #6.
God, Jesus, and Mary are Life and Source of Life
- The life of God in Himself must be considered each day, esteemed, adored, loved, and imitated
in our life, life of the spirit and source of all life, and especially of the life of the Spirit:
for God is Spirit, and His being is His life. The life of God in Himself is life of light and of
love, life of most intimate communication, life of unity and of society, life of communication of
essence between the divine Persons, life of intimate residence of persons, the one in the other:
Ego in Patre et Pater in me [I am in the Father and the Father in me] (Jn 14:11), life of
repose and of felicity, life of origin and of
emanation, for there is procession in the Divinity: Ego ex Deo processi [I proceeded from God]
(Jn 8:42); life of origin in unity, for the Father is the beginning of the two other Persons,
and the Father and the Son are one principle of the Third. All life must be referred to this life.
- The life of Jesus is a new life, established from and through the mystery of the
Incarnation. It is adorable, and contains double life, as it contains two natures: the life
of the divinity in the humanity, and the life of the humanity in the divinity. O life, source
of life, source of life of grace and of glory, and source of life of nature again
in the resurrection! life which we have each day to regard, to adore, to love, and to imitate
as ours: for it has its origin in our iniquities, as well as in the love of the Father. It
is the cause of our salvation, and the model of our life:
Principium creaturae Dei [Beginning of the creation of God] (Rev 3:14).
- The life of the Virgin, life for Jesus and in Jesus: for she is belonging to Jesus before
Jesus is, since she is not living except through being Mother of Jesus. And after Jesus has
taken birth in her, she has taken a birth and new life in Him; and thenceforth she is living in
Jesus as Jesus is living in her. Life singular and eminent in grace, life solitary through its
eminence, life of society through Jesus and in Jesus: for, in her solitude, she has Jesus in her,
and she is in Jesus.
- All these three lives are admirable, and must be the object and occupation of our life,
which is nothing but a shadow of life and of light, with regard to these three lives. As God
lives in Himself, and this life of God, which we adore, carries the life of the three divine
Persons, the one in the other, also God has rendered us capable of living in ourselves, and
of living, again, in others; and sometimes we live more sensibly in others than in ourselves,
and that is destructive of our proper life through the imbecility of it. Living in God,
living in His essence, living in His divine Persons, living in Jesus, His unique Son,
this is the life, and our life and light: In ipso vita erat et vita erat lux hominum
[In Him was life and the life was the light of men] (Jn 1:4): living in she who has
given life to Jesus, that is to say, in the Virgin, who is called the life, and is the
beginning of a life so great.
In the universe, we contemplate the life of plants, of animals, and of men, life vast
and diversified; life in which there are many rarities to observe; and one alone of these lives,
and of one of the smallest animals of them, that is to say, of the fly to honey, has occupied
the life of a philosopher, and he was ravished in this occupation. We have in the faith
of greater objects of ravishments and of greater lives to contemplate: the life of God, of
Jesus, of His most-holy Mother. Let us occupy ourselves in them, and live in these divine
objects.
- But we speak of the life, and we are in state of death: Filii irae, filii mortis [Sons of wrath,
sons of death]. We are born dead and separated from the true life, and we cannot either
arrive, nor aspire by ourselves to it. Our life in the earth must be a life both of death and
of life all together; of life of the world to us and of sin; of life with God, with Jesus, and
with the Virgin. If we separate the usage of this life from the usage of this death, we are
in peril of finding a new death within the life, and the sin within the grace, and the shadows
in the light, through pride, through error, and through self-love.
Thus let us join in our interior and spiritual conduct the life and the death together,
the abasement and the elevation, the abnegation of ourselves and the love of God. This is
why Jesus, Who is the life and the master of this life, begins His secret catechesis with
Nicodemus from birth, because we are outside the life, and we need to be born; and He
commences His public catechesis to His disciples with abnegation, which must be supposed
to this birth as the privation to the form which must be introduced in natural things:
Abneget semetipsum, et tollat crucem suam quotidie, et sequatur me [Let him deny himself,
and take up his cross daily, and follow me] (Mt 16:24). Three elements which
compose the interior and spiritual man: Abneget, tollat, sequatur, in lieu of
the four elements which compose the exterior and material man: for so the interior man
has a greater rapport with the Trinity, Who shines in the divine essence and in the
Incarnation, than the exterior and material man, which supports it.
Source: Oeuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne
(Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 915-917.
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