Love Is Not Loved

I love joking with friends about how saints have a habit of stalking us.  When a certain saint takes an interest in me—take Saint Therese of Lisieux for instance—I will find her appearing through holy cards or quotations from her that particularly strike my heart or someone mentioning something about her that catches my attention.  Somehow or other she makes her presence known.

So too with other saints.

Not so with my dear patron, however: Blessed Jacopone da Todi whose feast is today.  Because he is not so well known it is difficult to run across him in as many places as one can find a more popular saint such as Saint Therese.

Recently my heart was a bit sad as I thought of that, wishing that he would reach out to me but thinking it would not happen.  I forgot about it, though, as happens with so many of the little things that pass through our minds and hearts.

Then I was reading the words of the day from the Spiritual Diary, a book that was my Nonna's, on the Solemnity of All Saints and in it were these words:

Blessed Jacapone could not bear to see people giving themselves over to sin, especially during the days of Mardi Gras, and he would repeat: "Love is not loved!  Love is not loved because He is not known."

That was a beautiful gift as I remembered my almost-prayer of wanting Jacopone to reach out to me, for I felt like he had.

It seemed like he reached out to me a second time when I was researching for my paper through my studies on how to help people be receptive to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  It seemed the most unlikely of places, as I read a book by a Mexican archbishop, Luis Martinez, on the Holy Spirit—a beautiful book called The Sanctifier.  There again I found those same words of Jacopone's:

"Love is not loved!"

Those words of my dear patron bring my mind back to the Baltimore question and the answer to what is the purpose of our lives: "To know, love, and serve God is this life and to be happy with Him in the next."

It is such a simple statement and yet so profound.  But why is it that we do not love Him who is love itself?

I would echo Jacopone's words: I believe that we do not love Him because we do not know Him.

Wherever we find doubt or fear or worry or anxiety or discouragement or any of those negative emotions within us blocking our relationship with God, it arises out of some wound or lie about who He is.  We do not truly know Him as the all-provident Father who can do nothing that is not for our greatest good and who can allow even the evil perpetuated by our free will in order to bring it to a good end.

I wish I had the courage to run through the streets and shout as Jacopone did about Love not being loved because He is not known.  I wish I had the courage to stand out there and offer to pray over any who would heed that message and wanted to allow the healing power of Love to transform them.

Yet in my little way I shall make that cry to the hearts of my friends and to my own heart.  Even more, I shall beg Love Himself to make Himself more fully known that He may be more fully loved.

Especially shall I beg Him, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, to make Himself known once again in our coming celebration of Christmas.  I will go to kneel at His feet, to adore the little Child who is King of Kings and the Lord of the universe, and I shall there beseech His mercy that He who is God may look with favor upon me who am not.  There too I will pray for you that you may be free in knowing your littleness before Him and rest with reckless, childlike abandon in the Father's arms.

Mirror of the Soul

In honor of a certain obscure Franciscan dear to my heart whose feastday happens to fall today, my patron Blessed Jacopone da Todi (to learn the story there read the post from two years ago here and for last year's post go here), I want to share with you a few stanzas from one of his poems:

HOW THE LIFE OF JESUS IS THE MIRROR OF THE SOUL
(Lauda xxxix)

Life of Jesus Christ!
Mirror of Verity!
Mine own deformity
I see in that clear Light.

Somewhat, methought, I was;
Somewhat, methought, I seemed;
The Self of which I dreamed
I gladly did survey.
But gazing on that Glass,
The light thenceforth that streamed
On my true nature gleamed:—
Down in the depths it lay!
Needs must I weep and pray;
For, far as earth from skies,
Seeing from Being lies—
Distant as day from night.
…

O false esteem of self!
How couldst thou dare to bring,
As offerings to thy King,
These worthless works of thine?
Thy nature, all deformed,—
Ah, what an evil thing
To urge it, tottering,
Before that Light Divine!
These errors that are mine,
Must loose me from their sway;
Disorder must away,
Ere God with man unite.

...

I cannot be re-born
Till mine own self be dead;
My life out-poured, out-shed,
Sheer essence to renew: 
On glorious Nothingness
He only can be fed,
Whom God Himself hath led;—
Here man hath naught to do.
O glorious state and true!
In Nothingness to cease.
Desire and mind at peace
In calmness infinite.

May that light of Christ be mirrored in your own soul as you prepare for the celebration of His coming only a few days from now!

I. Jesus is Condemned to Death

One of my earliest memories associated with church (aside from lying under the chairs to benefit from someone's ability to make origami water bombs and singing "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" with the rhyming words such as "beast" and "priest" switched) is the praying of the Stations of the Cross and the singing of the Stabat Mater.  That memory became all the more precious to me once I discovered that Blessed Jacopone da Todi is credited with writing that beautiful Marian hymn.

The Stations of the Cross remains one of my favorite devotions.  What power there is in this meditation on the suffering that we wish to flee at all costs and that our Lord took on solely out of His great love for us.

Because of my attraction to this devotion, and impelled to take up some small Lenten practice here on the Interweb that the Holy Spirit may work through these petty words I scatter about now and again, it seems right to look at each of the stations throughout Lent.  So accompany me, if you will, on this journey with our Lord to find whatever insights He will give through these ponderings.

The First Station

Jesus is Condemned to Death

And [Pilate] entered into the hall again, and he said to Jesus: Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.  Pilate therefore saith to him: Speakest thou not to me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?  Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that hath delivered me to thee, hath the greater sin.
John 19:9-11


The power of Christ shines so brightly through its human shroud in His words answering Pilate.  There are thousands of responses He might have made to Pilate, but the fact that He chose these words must draw our attention to what He means.  One phrase in particular stands out in bold assertion:

Thou shouldst not have had any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.

He might have said to Pilate: "I am not afraid of you because I know that My Father has given this power into your hands and it is My will to accomplish all that He desires of Me."  He might have said: "The Father's Providence has taken even your small part into account."  He might have said it hundreds of different ways.  The meaning remains the same: God, the Almighty Father, gives power to men that they may choose to do the most cruel and evil things because through the suffering that results He will work the greatest good any could ever imagine.

So it is in our lives.  Many things say to us in one way or another: "Look at the power I have over you.  Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Of course we do.  We complain.  We look for a way out.  We try to justify an easier path.

If only we could respond as boldly as our Lord: "No, you have no power over me except what has been given from above.  Therefore I will trust in the Father's Providence to arrange for good to come from all the suffering and evil in my life that I have no power over.  If I have not the power, He does."

Jesus, give us this grace, we beg You!

My adorable Jesus, it was not Pilate, no, it was my sins that condemned Thee to die. I beseech Thee, by the merits of this sorrowful journey, to assist my soul in its journey towards eternity. I love Thee, my beloved Jesus; I repent with my whole heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

A Man of Deep Love

I have little enough to add to my words of last year upon this date, December the 22nd, the feast of my patron and namesake, Blessed Jacopone da Todi.  (If you would like to read those words, you may find them here.)

Although there is so much I might reflect upon from the greatness of this man I know best through his poetry, now does not seem the time.  Therefore I shall simply share with you a poem I wrote in the spring of 2012 as I sat beside his tomb in the peaceful stillness—a poem that is also a prayer.

The tomb of Blessed Jacopone da Todi

To Blessed Jacopone at his tomb

To pray and go—should be enough;

Yet still I linger here and wait

For what I do not know. Perhaps

I hope some miracle will appear—

Some sign of grace to take my heart

And convert it to His love.

Pray for me—that is enough

To ask. Pray for me that I may bow

My will to His and serve not myself

But Him alone in those I meet—

Through His power then may my heart

Witness to the world of His love.

O Blessed Jacopone, is this enough?

To lay my prayers before thy tomb,

That what I cannot do alone I may yet

Accomplish through thy prayers for me,

For His grace poured out upon my heart

To convert all to His love.