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A Christmas/Epiphany Meditation
(Letter XXII of the Letters of Blessed John of Avila [London: Burns & Oates, 1904], pp. 141-147)

To a lady, on the feast of the Epiphany, telling her how to adore the infant Jesus and offer him the gold of divine love.

    I wrote to you in Advent about the great mercy our Lord showed in deigning to visit us, and the happiness of the soul to whom He comes.  I hope that in His mercy He has come to you, and that you have received Him with faith and love.  Offer yourself, then, wholly, as a perpetual sacrifice to Him Who has deigned to be your loving guest; and since you have toiled like the Magi in seeking the Divine Child, imitate them in their faith and in their gifts to Him when they found Him.  Contemplate God Himself, humbly lying in a crib within a stable, where human reason would never have led the Kings to look for Him.  The star, which is faith, stopped above the cave, and declared by its resplendent rays, as by so many tongues, that here, concealed from man's understanding, He lay hid, Who is above all our science and understanding.  So does the star which is faith, teach us to believe the more firmly where there appear least grounds to do so.  For if these travelers had been led by their reason instead of by the star, they would have sought the new-born King in a royal palace as the most suitable abode for Him.  Our Lord gives a great grace to those to whom He manifests the star of the light of faith, so that, like the Magi, they may find Him hidden in the swaddling clothes and amidst the poverty of His Birth, or, as did the good thief, in the ignominy and death of the cross.  If the three Kings had believed our Lord to be but an earthly sovereign however great, they would merely have paid Him the respect due from one man to another, but faith revealed to them the Incarnate God concealed beneath the appearance of a new-born Babe, and they adored Him, prostrate on the ground, confessing their own nothingness in His presence.

    Take care not to appear empty-handed before our Lord, and think not that you are giving Him anything, if you give not your love.  Nothing but God can make you happy, nor can anything you offer Him but yourself satisfy Him.  His is not a mercenary love which regards the value of the gift, but it is that true and perfect love, which is the union of hearts.  This, as St. Bernard says, is when God and the soul speak in accord.  For if the Almighty threaten or punish me, I must not do the like to Him, but, when He manifests His power, humble myself the more.  But if He give me His love, I am bound to return it, crying with the Spouse: "My beloved to me and I to him."

    What an honor for the creature to be united to its Creator in such a bond of mutual love; this indeed is what Isaias tells us “levels mountains and raises valleys.” (XL. 4.)  Offer your heart to Christ, Whose tender mercy for us led Him, though the infinite God, to become a man, nay an infant, and Who, not satisfied with shedding tears when He was born, eight days after shed His Blood for us.

    Since you so entirely belong to our Lord, do not rob Him of yourself, lest you be found among those of whom the prophet Jeremias says: "They walked in their own will and in the perversity of their own wicked heart." (VII. 24.)  To whom else should you give yourself?  Where else would you be better off?  How can you exalt yourself more highly than by loving Jesus, Who loved you and washed you in His Blood, and Who gives Himself to those who desire Him, making them from men to become as gods?

    Be careful then, to offer gold to the Infant Jesus. For as a little gold is worth more than a great quantity of the baser metals, so a little gold of true love is far more precious than all the copper of fear and self-interest, with the actions springing from them.  Many people value themselves in proportion to the number of their good works, forgetting that God cares more for the motive or our actions than for their quantity, and that far fewer works would be better pleasing to Him, were they accompanied by warmer love.  With love, a small alms, or a fast from one meal only, will content Him better than much greater austerities and gifts without it.  So the widow who gave her two mites pleased Him better than many who gave far more, because of her truer love.  God's greatness appears in this, that no service, however great, counts for much before Him, if not rendered with the whole heart.  For why should He, Who has need of nothing, and Who cannot increase in riches or in any other good, care for aught that can be given to Him, except for the love of the giver, which is so precious a present that none can rightly refuse it?  This gift God desires so strongly, that He punishes all with eternal death who withhold it from Him.  Who can be so little covetous as He Who has no need of anything we can offer Him?  Or who is there that longs for our hearts as keenly as God does, seeing that He sends to hell those who refuse them to Him?  Even if we love Him, He is not contented unless we prefer Him above all else.  St. Augustine cried: “Lord, Thou commandest me to love Thee, and dost threaten me with misery unless I do so!”

    Let your chief care be to love our Lord.  It is for this He made Himself so little, for the more He dissembles His Majesty, the more He shows us His goodness and thus invites our love, which we are more drawn to give Him in the littleness which He took upon Him, than in the majesty which is His own.  His wisdom was hidden when He became an infant without power of speech; His power appeared as if bound by the swaddling-clothes, as He lay upon the hay, suffering from the bitter cold.  All this He did, because the more He hid His other attributes, the more He manifested His tenderness for us, so that we might love Him the better for what He endured for us.  For, surely, when we see Him tremble with cold, it draws our hearts to Him more than if we saw Him warmly clad, and free from suffering.  Therefore, if we refuse our hearts to the divine Babe Whose devotion to us cost Him so dear, we shall have a heavy fine to pay.  He who gives his affections to God, offers what David terms “the h0Ɩ0cαųst with its marrow;” for as fire consumes the whole sacrificial victim, so does love consume the whole man, both within and without, and its flames do not leave unburnt the straws of exterior vanities.  How can he whose heart is given to the Infant Jesus, bring himself to care for pomp and show?  For those who love grow to resemble one another.  Since God bestowed on us such a favor in coming down to show Himself to us as our way, let us travel to heaven in His footsteps, Who is the Truth, and not run in the treacherous path of the world, which would lead us to hell.  Let our h0Ɩ0cαųst contain marrow, which is soft and quickly melted, like the heart given to God, which should have nothing hard or sharp in it towards either Him or its neighbors.  And as the marrow is protected from injury, first by the skin, then by the flesh, and lastly is encased within the hard bone itself, so should charity be guarded by the devout soul at the risk of losing all it possesses; and the will, hard as the bone, should resolutely defend, at any cost, its love for our Lord.

    Such must be the gold you offer to the Infant, Who chose to be born so poor.  Open, then, your caskets, as did the Magi; for if your heart, which is your treasure-house, be kept shut, all your labor is lost.  All else is not gold but tinsel, and you would keep the best for yourself, and give our Lord the worst.  Open your heart then, and place in it the new-born Infant, for without Him it cannot be said to live.  He is not a burden; hold Him then fast to your breast as the Spouse did her “bundle of myrrh.” (Cant. I. 12.)  Treat Him with all reverence, for He is your God; yet you may dare to speak to Him, for He is a child, and is as sweet and gentle as He looks.  Beware lest you let Him go, for it requires great care to keep Him.  You must love Him dearly, or you will either forget Him, or He will weary you.  Do not rest until you feel sure of your love for one another.  Until the soul knows this, she lives in fear and sadness beneath the weight of the Law, but when once she realizes that God dwells in her, and she in Him, there is little that can trouble her.  May this be accomplished in you.  Amen.