BLESSED JAN VAN RUYSBROEK ~ ‘The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage’ – Chapter V & VI – ‘OF PATIENT ENDURANCE’ & ‘OF THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST’ - pages 33-36
[BLESSED JAN VAN RUYSBROEK – XIII-XIV Century AD; Ruisbroek, Holy Roman Empire/ Groenendael, Holy Roman Empire; Mystic, Spiritual Writer, Doctor Divinus Ecstaticus]
“Chapter V ~ OF PATIENT ENDURANCE
The third point is patient endurance. We should mark this point carefully, for it adorned Christ our Bridegroom all His life. For His sufferings began very early, as soon as He was born; they began with poverty and cold. Then He was circumcised and shed His blood; He was driven to a strange country; He served the lord Joseph and His mother; He suffered hunger and thirst, shame and contempt, the vile words and works of the Jews. He fasted, He watched, and He was tempted by the devil. He was subject to all men; He wandered from country to country, from town to town, with much labour and great zeal, that He might preach the Gospel.
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"These then were Christ's inward virtues: humility, charity, and patient endurance. These three virtues Christ our Bridegroom practised all His life, and He died with them, and paid our debt according to justice. And of His generosity He has opened His side. From there flow out the rivers of well-being and the sacraments of bliss."
"Christ our Bridegroom, wounded to the death, forsaken by God and by all creatures, dying on the cross, hanging like a log for which no one cared, save Mary, His poor mother, who could not help Him!
Christ also suffered spiritually, in His soul, because of the hardened hearts of the Jews and of those who were putting Him to death; for whatever signs and wonders they saw, they remained in their wickedness. And He suffered because of their corruption and because of the vengeance that would come on them for His death; for He knew that God would avenge it on them, body and soul. Also He suffered from the distress and anguish of His mother and His disciples, who were in great affliction."