Jean de Bernières-Louvigny: "The Heart of Jesus Is a Rich Treasury for the Christian Soul"
Introduction
The Sacred Heart was not a new concept when it was revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), though the official consecration and liturgical feast requested through those revelations was new. A number of St. Margaret Mary's near-contemporaries wrote about the devotion, such as St. John Eudes (1601-1680) and Jean de Bernières-Louvigny (1602-1659). Bernières was a lay Third Order Franciscan who founded a hermitage in Caen; he also served as a treasurer for the same region, and he provided financial support to the still-young Church in Canada, particularly through his relationship with St. Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672). Among his writers, the greatest is the Interior Christian, published posthumously in 1661. It was a great favorite of St. Claude La Colombière and others; however, its influence among Catholics fell drastically when Bernières was posthumously condemned as a Quietist in 1689, and his writings placed on the Index of Forbidden Books. It still retained popularly among Protestants, though: the noted Calvinist hymnist Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769) translated it into German. An English translation was also published in 1684, and is available online. In recent years, there have also been some attempts to rehabilitate Bernières.
The below excerpts are my own translation. The larger excerpt, "The Heart of Jesus Is A Rich Treasury for the Christian Soul," is Part II, Book II, Second Treatise, Chapter III. The smaller except comes from Part I, Book IV, Chapter VII, which contains a retreat for ten days focused on "the adorable person of Jesus." This excerpt is Prayer 3 from the Second Day.
The Heart of Jesus Is A Rich Treasury for the Christian Soul
Jean de Bernières-Louvigny
The interior of Jesus is an abyss filled with an infinite number of all-holy and all-pure dispositions, with which He honors and glorifies His Eternal Father. The divinity is the primitive source from which flow these divine dispositions in the interior of Jesus Christ, and His adorable heart is the treasury which receives them and which preserves them in order to communicate them to men and enrich them; it is there that they can find something to supply their extreme poverty; for this treasury is infinitely rich and inexhaustible.
If you enter as you must into the interior of Jesus, you will find there something to repast your soul, which is most famished for divine love. It is in this sacred heart that the Eternal Father finds something to satiate and content the desire He has of loving and being loved. The best advice that I could give a soul is to purify oneself well from all creatures, and to flow all sweetly, through holy, loving spurts, into this divine interior. Do not amuse yourself with loving yourself, or, at least, do not content yourself with it, for your love is too fleeting, but hold yourself in the indulgence of the love that the Eternal Father bears for His Son Jesus, and of that which the only-begotten Son bears for His Father.
I know well that the interior of the divinity is inaccessible to the creature, there being an infinite distance there: but the heart of Jesus will be its refuge, to cause, in it and through it, interior productions that cannot be imagined. The faithfulness of a soul that loves this divine heart makes it feel something for it, and the more it renders itself faithful to grace, the more it tastes that the Lord is sweet (cf. Ps 34:8), and that He alone is the beatitude of the soul. He takes a singular pleasure in cherishing and caressing a soul, but He wants it to guard a great faithfulness in itself, that is to say, He wants it to quit all creatures, without reserve, and to deny itself entirely, in order to be entirely His, for He is so jealous that He suffers no companion.
O my dear Jesus, when will I die in the plain liberty of occupying myself with none but You alone, and of reposing in You as in my center? Outside of You, my soul has no repose, and it does nothing but long to return to You; when temporal affairs overwhelm and distract it, making it, for a time, lose sight of Jesus, Whose face and all divine heat vivify it and sustain it, it remains all languishing and cold. What it can do then is to agree to this painful state through submission to the orders of God, Who wills it to be in this state, and, finding no other satisfaction in itself, to seek for it all in God alone.
It suffices me that God is Who He is, that He possesses, by Himself, an infinite and unchangeable happiness. It is enough for me that Jesus is Jesus, and that His divine heart is full of the fullness of the Holy Spirit; I am poor in myself, but I am rich in Jesus Christ, Who is all of my treasure, and, if He is closed off from me at present, since I am in the privation of lights and of the taste of God, He does not stop being mine. He will open up as soon as it pleases Him, and He will give me the liberty to draw from Himself what could soon solace all my miseries! And though I remain so poor and deprived of all, it matters little that I am nullified and reduced to the last misery, since Jesus is always infinitely rich, and since His heart is a treasury of light, of grace, and of love, which glorifies God His Father, for Him and for me.
My soul having been crucified for some time, and the beloved who often consoles it with His divine presence having been hidden for a little while, He began to to show Himself to me again with admirable kindnesses, and His embraces seem sweeter than ever to me, the fire that burns me seems purer to me, and, through the little progress that I note in myself, through the mercy of God, I know that I have been in the crucible a little. It is true that the present moment of sufferings is very bitter, but that which follows it, after they have passed, is agreeable! I feel that my prayer is elevated and purified. And, finally, I see that God has not abandoned me; I praise Him for His kindnesses, I want to sing His divine mercies forever (cf. Ps 89:1). O Jesus, how ineffable are Your kindnesses, to thus reach out Your arms and open Your loving heart to Your unworthy servant! I want to sink into it; I want to lose myself in that ocean of marvels, to never find myself again.
For some weeks, it has seemed to me that this divine Savior unites me to Himself more intimately than usual, I have more lights in prayer and in communion, which makes me see the blessedness and importance of this union, and how it ought to be practiced. I taste, I savor, I repose in Jesus, Whom I feel, through experience, to be my peace, my joy, my beatitude, and my center. My soul has a continual tendency of love towards Jesus, and I often associate myself, through desire, to His divine and human states, to His occupations towards God His Father, to His love, and to all His holy dispositions.
I receive from the goodness of Jesus many graces, feelings, and views on these divine mysteries; and it seems to me that He speaks to me inwardly through clarities and sweet persuasions and powerful attractions, to invite me to communion in His holy dispositions. And, particularly, to embrace His poverty, and His contempts, and hidden life, and prayer; and my soul responds to Him through yieldings full of respect, and most voluntary consents to His holy inspirations, in which it accords with sweetness, peace, and joy, although nature finds these things repugnant; it confides in His grace, which gives it strength, and thus it abandons itself to His guidance, all full of confidence and love.
O! How sweet is the dialogue of Jesus and the soul! How intimate and charming it is! When the soul is accustomed to it, it converses with its beloved in a manner so spiritual, and so tranquil, that no one notices this lovable colloquy, in which the soul is instructed about what it ought to do, and what it will suffer. There it is in a great repose with its spouse, conversing and speaking of the excess of love of Jesus for it, and of the reciprocal love that it wants to have for Jesus. When Jesus sees a soul that desires to serve none but Him, and which quits every other affection and every other thought for this reason, He takes possession of it, and He moves and applies it, through His divine wisdom, goodness, and power, to the things that He desires of it. Provided, then, that a soul be once in the hands of Jesus Christ, it has only to abandon itself to His divine guidance. Its principal exercise, and almost its only care, is to be strongly united with Him.
This Divine Heart Will Be Your Oratory
In my third prayer, I had a vision that, since the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the admirable union of the Creator with the creature, men are called to a most high prayer, and to speak with God. The grace of prayer is an effect of this divine mystery; since it is given to us, one must make a very great state of it, and preserve it with great respect. The heart of Jesus is the center of men; when our poor soul is distracted, it must be sweetly drawn to the heart of Jesus Christ, to offer to the Eternal Father the holy dispositions of this adorable heart, to unite the little that we do with the infinite that Jesus does. Thus, in doing nothing, we do much through Jesus.
Thus this divine heart of Jesus will be, henceforth, your oratory, O my soul; it is in it and through it that you will offer all your prayers to God the Father, so that they be more agreeable to Him. It will be your school, where you will go to learn the supereminent science of God, all contrary to the opinions of the world; and you will find that all its maxims are most pure and most sublime; it will be your treasury, where you will go to take out all that you need to enrich yourself: purity, love, faithfulness; but what is most precious and most abundant in this treasury are humiliations, sufferings, and poverties. The love and esteem of these things is so precious a jewel that it is originally and principally found only in the heart of God made man. Other hearts, however noble they be, have more or less of it, in the measure that they can draw more or less of it from this treasury.
Sources: Bernières Louvigny, Le Chretien Interieur…, Tome Second (Paris: André Pralard, 1687), 450-456; Bernières Louvigny, Le Chrestien Interieur… (Paris: Edme Martin, 1680), 351-352.
I should note that I was pointed to these passages by Georges Guitton, Perfect Friend: The Life of Blessed Claude La Colombière, S.J., 1641-1682, tr. William J. Young (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1956), 171-172.
Translation ©2025 Brandon P. Otto. Licensed via CC BY-NC. Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.
Comments
Post a Comment