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.

The Heart of a Child

One of the most beautiful things about children is how much they let you love them.  Love doesn't scare them away.

You can just stare at them and smile and they don't find it rude or uncomfortable.  They don't make excuses about being too busy or needing to do things.  They want you to play with them and spend time with them and aren't the least bit shy about inviting you to do so in whatever way they want it, whether throwing a ball with them or climbing up you again and again to do flips in the air or asking to be carried on your shoulders.

They know how to receive.  It's a pity we all forget how as we get older.

It's so easy to start believing that you aren't worthy of love or that people are just pretending to like you because they are being charitable while secretly they're wishing you would just go away.  It's easy to get so focused on work and duty that there isn't really time for others.  It's easy to take to heart the idea that it is more blessed to give than to receive and so to build your life around giving to others so that you don't have to face your own internal need for them—your need to receive.

Perhaps that is why Christ told us to become like little children.  Perhaps that is why He wanted to come to earth as a little child Himself.

Today is Gaudete Sunday.  After hearing my pastor's homily speaking of how the Church commands us to rejoice this day, I found it a beautiful gift to see how my Father in heaven provided for such rejoicing as I played with many joy-filled children after Mass.  My reflection following that experience seems to me most suitable for preparing for the great feast of Christmas—the great celebration of Christ's birth—for I am pondering what it means to become like a little child and what it means to welcome the gift of the Christ-Child into my heart.

Gaudete!

Incarnation

Carved wooden altar—wood of manger;

Gold glimmers tabernacle—golden straw.

Stare anew: the sight becomes a stranger

As the piercing star the shepherds saw.

Breath of oxen—breath of God's own life

Exhaled in layers of dust and grime—

There daily work and pain and strife

Did long await His bursting into time.

His two bright eyes stare, imploring

Hearts sheltered, cold, and dim,

Even as we come to kneel, adoring

God in flesh—blind to sight of Him

Who comes to break our shroud of fears,

Of dreams too small, to catch our tears

In tiny hands outstretched. He smiles

To see those weighted down with trials

Stop for one brief moment, darkly gaze

With blank stare at the brightest blaze

Hid in swaddling clothes, flesh to give

To all: to teach us, newborn, to live.

 

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!