Life of love
THE WHITE BOOK - III: Celestial Love
(2008)
Placing Ourselves in the Presence of God
(by way of a Preface)
“An angel of the Lord appeared to [Moses]
in fire flaming out of a bush....
God called out to him..., ‘Moses! Moses!’
He answered, ‘Here I am.’
God said, ‘Come no nearer!
Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.’ ”
(Ex 3:2-5)
*
God asked Moses to remove his sandals and stand barefoot before Him. God did not ask anything more of him, no other action or sign of respect, homage or veneration. It is as though everything were understood in the single act of remaining, according to the now well-known expression, “barefoot on holy ground”.1 When we stand barefoot in this manner, we lower ourselves, we humble ourselves, but at the same time, we “connect ourselves” with the sacredness of the place that has become holy through the presence of God. We are united, through this very spot, with the holiness of God present in all the immensity of His Creation.
Numerous peoples and different religions have made a ritual of this gesture. It is present in Islam where one takes one’s shoes off before entering a mosque. Likewise, in India, China and Japan, one does not enter a temple wearing shoes. Elsewhere, the same gesture is made, or another has taken its place. In Christianity, upon entering a church, we make the sign of the cross, with holy water if possible, and if the Blessed Sacrament is present, as it should be, we genuflect before it, for it is “THE PRESENCE” that makes this a sacred place.
But it is also possible to delimit sacred perimeters everywhere, in accordance with needs: every place can become a chapel, and nature provides the most beautiful ones in the depths of clear forests, on the water’s edge, on mountain tops haloed in the clouds.
*
Well, what one should do when opening Marie-Paule’s third White Book, or the other White Books, or Life of Love in all its volumes, appendices and complementary booklets, is to dispose one’s soul to experience this same “sacredness”, this same “presence”. Thus, just as in taking off our shoes, we remove the barrier between ourselves and the sacred ground, it is likewise necessary, before reading Marie-Paule, to remove the mental barriers and rid ourselves of all that can clutter the soul, in order to be able “to connect ourself” with “THE PRESENCE”. We often think we have done so when in reality we have not done it enough. The world sends out its tentacles everywhere, and to drag oneself away from them for even an instant cannot be achieved without a terrible battle and without maintaining an exhausting vigilance.
Of course, we will find in this White Book III, Celestial Love – among the jets of light and the revelations, notably on the life of the hereafter – ordinary sentences expressing the day-to-day living. Almost thirty years ago, Raoul Auclair, writing his preface to Life of Love, had immediately perceived all the “potential” of this ordinariness, at times real and at times only seemingly.2 In any case, besides, a bush in the desert had nothing special about it either. Except that this particular one was burning, without being consumed. But Marie-Paule also told us that she was “burning with love” 3 – she is “burning” on a permanent basis and without ever ceasing to project her light and guide us.
*
Her book is as white as a standard, as white as peace, as white as the synthesis of light or the ultimate brilliance of fire, as white as the Immaculate. Thus, it is no longer “out of a bush” that God is calling us and speaking to us today, but from the heart of a book. So, we should most certainly not read Life of Love and the White Books as we read other written material, reviews, books and newspapers. That would be like going to the bush without removing our shoes, a sign that we have not felt, within the fire, “THE PRESENCE”, and that we will not give it the opportunity to manifest itself fully. On the contrary, we must first awaken within ourselves an awareness that, through those books, we are going to enter within a holy perimeter, walk on sacred ground. As though we were entering a celestial temple, we must make the sign of the cross in our heart and genuflect in our soul.
Immediately, everything changes and we see what we would not otherwise have seen, hear what we would not have heard. The mystery opens before our eyes to the extent that we have set ourselves in a position to perceive it, over and above the simple words and the ordinariness of the days – seemingly – for in reality they are weighed down with work and prayer and filled with the light contact of souls and the familiar commerce with God, that God who speaks to Marie-Paule and speaks to us through her. Then, our heart immediately becomes enkindled and yet is not consummated. More than that, it swells and is filled with divinity.
*
That is not all. In the passage from Exodus, there is the bush burning all by itself in the middle of the desert, but there is also Moses. He was chosen, designated by God to liberate his people. He awakened him, guided him, permitted him to reach the Promised Land, and later, he appeared on Mount Tabor with Christ.
Today, Marie-Paule, as she listens to God speaking to her and as she then speaks to us in His name, is in turn accomplishing a work of liberation, but on an entirely different level. She is not freeing a people from the domination of another; rather, she offers to all of humanity the liberation from a slavery that is infinitely more oppressing than that of the Jewish people.
It is in that sense that she is the Lady of All Peoples (in the first meaning of those words), the Co-Redemptrix (in the fullest sense of the term) and that she leads us through the desert of our time to the new Promised Land. Suffering is required – much suffering, hers above all, ours a little bit – and then there must be time. But, at the end of the exodus, at the end of the road, what a paradise of crystal bathed in light.
And this Promised Land, she gives it to us, today for tomorrow, because it is already her promised land. She paid the top price for it; she drove out of it the perverse Usurper. She is already fully its Queen. Yes, it is written in Life of Love and it is Heaven that declared it: Marie-Paule is “the Sovereign of the earth”.4 And like a hundred Moses, she leads each one of her peoples to the Promised Land, to her conquered Earth, which is both that of the mortals we are and that of the risen ones we will be, there where, for ever, she will be, in the Fire of the Spirit, “the Spouse of the Lord and the Queen of the King”.5
Marc Bosquart, April 15, 2008
- Translation of the title of a well-known book in French by T.C. McLuhan, dealing with the wisdom of American Indians.
- Life of Love, volume I, Preface, page 12.
- White Book I, Eucharistic Graces, page 89. Cf. also pages 140-142.
- Life of Love, volume I, chapter 44, page 272 (an indication subsequently repeated a few times).
- The Lady of All Peoples, 53rd message, May 31, 1957.
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© 1998 - MARIE-PAULE, VIE D’AMOUR INC., Quebec, Canada 