As we were celebrating the Third Sunday of Easter, the Capuchin Order was commemorating in his burning love for Jesus and his Church the liturgical memorial of Blessed Thomas of Olera. This great and humble Capuchin who worked in the Tyrolese part of Austria passionately promoted the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus by his writings, even before St Margaret Mary Alacoque had the visions from Our Lord concerning his Most Sacred Heart. This he did with those most beautiful sentiments as well as with the soundest doctrine.
Blessed Thomas was born in Bergamo, Italy, in 1563, and joined the Venetian Capuchin Province in the year 1580. In the midst of the Protestant revolt in 1619, Brother Thomas was sent by the superiors to support the Catholic faith by spreading around the true healing doctrine of Mother Church, thus combatting the heresies that were poisoning the true region. This indefatigable Capuchin simply went back and forth in Tyrol spreading the Good News of salvation under the wings of the Church and protection of the Catholic Hapsburg rulers. His outstanding fidelity to Christ and his Church is wonderfully shown in those little persuasive talks he shared with all classes of people. In this singular manner Brother Thomas clearly became an angel of order and peace.
Our Capuchin annals, the Analecta Ordinis Fratrum Minorum Capuccinorum (Analecta OFM Cap), which is the official publication of the Order since 1885, marvelously detail the life of our Order and is published by our General Curia, makes this profound comments on Blessed Thomas: It was not human learning and worldly address that made him an apostle, but the wisdom of the saints, which God gave him, and meditation which raised him to heavenly truths. A plain and unlettered man, he could speak and write such excellent matter on the Faith and the Sacred Scriptures that he surprised even the highest theologians, and either shamed or converted the Church’s enemies. What touched him most and occupied him till death was his love of God and his contempt of self in humility and abnegation.
The editor who undertook the work of publishing Brother Thomas’ writings left the following reflection about this learned lay Brother who let the Holy Spirit lead him to the full truth of Jesus’ Heart: He was a profound abyss of humility, from which, like a great volcano there shot forth glorious coals and flames of heavenly fire and divine love. This fire burned his heart and drew him close to the Heart of Christ so that the brother became an eloquent pleader for compassion and love for the adorable Heart of Christ.
After hearing such reflections filled with that unsurpassed love for Jesus’ Heart which led and transformed the life of our dear Brother Thomas of Olera, it would be wise to savour some of his teachings. In his Meditation on the Heart of Jesus, Blessed Thomas writes:
O Holy Heart of my most beloved Lord, I turn to you and thus my spirit communicates with you, because you, o dear Heart, are my refuge, my comforter. […] Ah, heart of my God, heart where that blessed spirit dwelt and resided, placed in the centre of the body of my Saviour, heart formed by the power of God, heart filled with God himself. […]
This heart was like the centre of a target: so that the humanity of Christ did not feel any pain, however slight, which did not hurt the heart of our Lord. […] The noble and divine humanity of Christ suffered in all its members, but the heart of Jesus suffered incomparably more, because all pains which Christ suffered in his members were all bound to wound that suffering heart […].
Oh, my soul, if you contemplate exteriorly the cruel and bitter passion of our most beloved Lord, contemplate also the inner passion of your beloved God, but most specially, contemplate that anguished heart; and if you shed tears of water over the external passion of our Lord, weep tears of blood with your inner eyes over the inner passion of your Lord. […] I adore you, I bless you for ever and propose to contemplate you day and night, making you, O heart of Jesus, to be a new passion.
[…] God wanted humanity to see that love: this heart was therefore opened with a cruel spear, and to show that the love of God lived in this heart, blood and water flowed out, gushing down from that blessed humanity. And if it is said that the blood of Christ was blood of love to redeem humankind, this blood poured out by Christ from his heart after death was most precious: it was an extreme overflow of love, the ultimate seal of his love.
And if you, o sinner, without any scruples, do not want to convert yourself because of the blood flowing out from the veins of your beloved Christ, at least convert yourself because of that blood and water flowing out from his precious heart: look again at that open heart, conceal yourself in it, build your room in it, because that heart can comprehend all saints in heaven and comprehends all his servants who are on earth.
[…] The spear opened his side and pierced the heart: having opened it, out flowed those two rivers of love and charity, so that every righteous person and friend of God could drink from his love, and sinners too could drink the blood poured out by his mercy and drink the sweet water of his love. Oh, who could have seen that open heart and who could have seen that blessed blood and water flow out! They were like two rivers, one of mercy, which was the blood, where every sinner could and still can go, confident to obtain mercy; there was also the river of water, where for sure every faithful friend of God could and still can go, hoping to grow in virtue and perfection.
In these writings of our Brother Blessed Thomas can we not see an early commentary of what St Faustina wrote about the two rays coming straight from Christ’s heart? Can we not see in this magnificent reflection by Brother Thomas what St Faustina recorded in her Diary entry 299, which says: When on one occasion my confessor told me to ask the Lord Jesus the meaning of the two rays in the image, I answered, “Very well, I will ask the Lord.” During prayer I heard these words within me: The two rays denote Blood and Water. The pale ray stands for the water that makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls … These two rays issued forth from the very depths of My tender mercy when my agonized Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross. (Diary, 299).
God our Father, source of every perfect gift, that inflamed with charity the heart of Blessed Thomas, concede also to us to follow his example, and through his intercession, make us collaborators of your plan of love: to make Christ the heart of the world. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
