The Elusiveness of Loving

    7 March 2005   I'm re-reading Growing Free -- another Carmelite memoir. It's fascinating that, a couple of years after first reading it, and being in a different place spiritually and environmentally, certain passages now take on a deeper significance for me. What comfort to know that she, too, had the same struggles with religious life that I'm having. People have told me right and left that obedience is hard, prayer can be completely unrewarding, the Divine Office a tedious chore, and Holy Mass nothing but an unholy mass of distractions. I accepted all that at a certain level of understanding. But it isn't until one finds oneself drowning in those dark waters, truly out of one's depth, that the heart understands as well as the mind. I used to say blithely, as one does in ignorance, "Obedience is hard, but all I have to do is see God's will in every request made of me, and then carry it out for love of him"; and, "I can't seem to pray, but I'll just wait for him and listen in silence"; and the most famous cliche' of all, "If I'm distracted, I'll just offer it up." Oh, the precocity of a spiritual neophyte who reads or hears a few pithy maxims, then regurgitates them at all the appropriate times, in all the appropriate situations, never dreaming that that in itself is a form of pride, because she is relying on her own little dangerous knowledge, not on a solid faith and trust in God's help. She learns only through the pain of seeming abandonment and the frustration of wanting to love, that those glib maxims ring false, unless they are truly tried through faith.     
     It is a humbling -- no, a humiliating thing, to realize that one's love is built on sand because it is love for God's gifts and consolations rather than for God himself. When you find yourself wanting to love, that is when the true loving begins. The desire itself is an act of faith. I think that's why Anselm's words speak so loudly to me. Love is a constant desiring, a continuous seeking: for intimacy, true knowledge and understanding, for union; to please, to depend on, to possess, and be possessed; to give totally, so that you may belong totally. God created me; therefore, nothing I am is my own to keep. I am his.

Let me seek You by desiring You,

and desire You by seeking You;

let me find You by loving You,

and love You in finding You.

~ St. Anselm