Salesian Literature

Chapter 11  :  Some of God’s lovers even die of love

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It was inevitable that the great St. Francis of Assisi (charity is a theme that always brings to him to my mind) should die because of love – his affection for God gave him so many, such deep yearnings, ecstasies, prostrations.

 

Yet, beyond that, God intended him to die not only out of love, but even of love itself –by letting him see the whole world as a miracle of love.  Only picture his deathbed! …

 

When he felt the end was near, he had himself laid naked on the ground; next he accepted, as an alms, a habit in which they clothed him; then he preached to his brethren, urging them to a love and fear of God, and of his Church; afterwards he asked for the Saviour’s passion to be read, and then began to recite with intense fervour Psalm 141: Loud is my cry to the Lord, the prayer I utter for the Lord’s mercy.

 

When he had uttered the final verse, Restore liberty to a captive soul; what thanks, then, will I give to thy name, honest hearts all about me, rejoicing to see thy favour restored! he died.  He was only forty-five years old.  It is impossible, surely, for anyone to be blind to the fact that this seraphic man, who had so longed for martyrdom, to give his life for love, died of it in the end – as I have already described[1].

 

The saintly Mother Teresa of Jesus too revealed after her death that she had died from a vehement assault of love; so intense was it, her natural constitution had been unable to bear it, and her soul departed after the beloved on whom her heart was set.

 

 

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[1]  Book 5, chapter 10.

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