Divine Intimacy - Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day Of The Liturgical Year

With the kind permission of "The Carmelites of Boston", we are making their translation to English of "Intimità Divina" available in this website.

"Intimità Divina" or "Divine Intimacy" as it was translated to English is, arguably, the most beloved meditation book among catholics in North America, it applies the Theresian method not only in its 3 steps format (1. Presence of God, 2. Meditation, 3. Colloquy), but on every paragraph you can see it.

On Authors own words:

Teresian spirituality is the spirituality of divine intimacy, that is, it tries to nourish in souls the ideal of intimacy with God and it directs them toward this ideal, principally by means of mental prayer. Mental prayer should be attuned, therefore, to this great and lofty aspiration. This is the "tone" we have tried to give our meditations, and the title, Divine Intimacy, indicates our intention to help souls as far as possible to attain this great end. ¹

Although the tone of meditations are, many times suiting the consacreted souls, it is nevertheless recommended to all, including laity, as noted by Cardinal Angello Dell'Acqua:

Priests, seminarians, contemplative souls, those dedicated to the apostolate, and finally the laity of every social class have meditated these pages and found encouragement and spiritual profit. ²

What is very notable in this book, is that, instead of proposing the soul to have horror of sin and fear of God, it offers a more positive view of love of God and admiration of virtue.

This is not accidental, but it is the very goal of the author:

Not all meditation books are adapted to souls thirsting for divine intimacy, simply because they are too much imbued with a spirit of fear. Not, indeed, that fear is not profitable for certain souls, but since there are so many books of this type, we judged it timely to publish a collection of meditations in which love would be united to filial, reverential fear, instead of servile fear, while not denying that this latter can be very salutary. This is also the reason we have by preference emphasized the positive topics of virtue and spiritual progress rather than the negative ones of vice and sin. ³

The book can be found online in the following links:

• The Catacombs Forum ⁴
• Arhicve.org ⁵

Footnotes:

1. Divine Intimacy, Tan Books, 1996, pp. 14 ↩

2. Divine Intimacy, Tan Books, 1996, pp. 5 ↩

3. Divine Intimacy, Tan Books, 1996, pp. 15 ↩

4. We have sourced a few meditations from here ↩

5. We also have sourced a few meditations from here ↩