My little child, I come to you in your littleness,
in the humility and ordinariness of your life.
And yet your own limitation, your smallness,
is not the measure of what I can do in you,
nor indeed of what you can do, my child,
when you yield yourself entirely to my grace.
For human limitation is simply a sign, child,
our your inherent dependence on Another,
on the Boundless One who sustains you
and carries you without ceasing in his love.
And to be limited does not mean to be “closed off”
to what is greater and more expansive than yourself.
No, it is sin and fear which closes the heart,
narrowing it and turning it in upon itself.
But littleness, however small it may be,
when it is open confidently to eternity,
to the Love that cradles all things in itself,
itself reflects eternity’s fullness
and the boundlessness of infinity.
There is, therefore, a twofold movement
by which I espouse you to myself in grace
and conform you to my own life of love:
I come to you in your littleness and humility,
concealing myself in the smallest of realities,
adapting myself to your limitations
and sanctifying them from within.
I resist the restless heart’s flight toward “greatness”
and toward things that sparkle externally,
descending rather to meet you in lowliness,
in the concrete sacramental mystery of each day.
And yet this movement of meeting you in littleness
corresponds with another movement: that of expansion,
by which, present so intimately to you in tenderness,
I open wide your heart in love and trust to my Mystery.
The Beauty which touches you, my child,
has a way of wounding the heart with longing
and drawing it out toward the One it has encountered.
Love has a way of dilating the heart marvelously,
so that the “barriers” which before it had erected
begin to fall away—and impossible becomes possible—
provided only one condition is met:
that Love asks it, that Love seeks it,
that it is embraced in obedient docility to Love.
Yes, for this twofold movement is inseparably one,
the very mystery of intimate relationship
for which, my beloved, I have created you.
It is the mystery of your trusting acceptance,
your childlike receptivity to my gift in every instant
which allows me to incarnate myself in your life,
to touch your heart in tenderness and love.
And this very trusting acceptance is, simultaneously,
the love-filled gift of yourself to me.
Therefore, when you let yourself be touched,
I both come to you, and you come to me,
as grace carries us toward one another
to be espoused lovingly in this meeting, you and I.
Immensity becomes little, to espouse itself to smallness,
and smallness dilates to infinity, to espouse itself to God.