Comment on the Encyclical Letter of Pope Benedict « God is Love »
according to the Spiritual Catholic Tradition
Translated From Italian
ICONOGRAPHY: ICON OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
With permission from the Carmel of Harissa, Lebanon
Text of the Encyclical Letter here.
Preface
The first encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Deus Caritas Est’ (DCE), contains many implicit richness. This comment of the first part of the Encyclical letter doesn’t claim to be exhaustive or unique. It’s goal is simple and in a certain way limited:
– we will show the extraordinary richness of the Encyclical letter from the point of view of Spiritual Theology.
– we will suggest some interpretations of certain passages from the Letter, but we will mainly attentive to the Pope’s approach and choice of topics and of their significance under the light of the Living Spiritual Tradition of the Church.
This way, the deep golden mine we find in this Letter will appear better and therefore will nourish us.
Opening his heart, the Pope with great audacity offers us a unique opportunity to enter in greater depths in our Faith. Our way to be grateful to him will be by following the way he opens for us.
Introduction
‘Eros is Somehow Rooted in Man’s Very Nature’ (DCE 11)
The most important aspect of Jesus of Nazareth’s mission lays on the fact that he is showing us a deeply moving face of God: and extreme all-embracing kindness and mercy. This face is put under trial in a radical way by the Cross and his death. The fact Jesus Rises demonstrates that his version of God, the face he presented was the right one: yes, this deeply moving Face of God he is unravelling to us is not a romantic invention, insipid, weak, effeminate, of a looser, but the true Face of God. The Resurrection victory is the victory of Jesus’ way of presenting God. This vulnerability of God that Jesus reveals to us comes out victorious and having the last word. Throughout the history of Jesus’ Body on earth – i.e. The Church – all the ones who believed in this face of God are accepting the challenge of showing, with the depth of their love that the authentic face of God is this one and not another one. In his Letter, because of the various extremisms from all over the world that today repeatedly threaten us, the Pope seems to feel that correct version of the face of God is risking to disappear and go into oblivion. ‘In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant. For this reason, I wish in my first Encyclical to speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.’ (DCE 2) The Pope perceives not only the threat that comes from outside of Christianity, he acknowledges as well its existence at the heart of Christianity. In fact, the Letter is addressed to all Christians. We don’t find in its beginning the classical ‘to all men of good will’ we find in certain types of Letters. With this Letter, the Pope wants to touch the heart of Christian Faith and to renew it from within: readdressing the true Face of God.
In different places in the Letter the Pope will mention the mystics. Certainly, by offering us this Encyclical letter he is placing himself, and us as well, in the greatest and most pure Christian mystical tradition. In fact, Christianity is mystical it it’s essence! It is this tradition that will guide us throughout the pages of this letter (especially in its first part, which is its the living heart) and will help us penetrate and savour its core in the best way. In fact, it is difficult to be fair with this Letter and with its hight without having recourse to the mystics and in particular way to the Doctors of the Church amongst them. If we fail to do that, this would mean that we are betraying the Pope’s thought and intentions, it would diminish the weight of his words, and would even make them deviate from the most pure and audacious sense! This Letter is on a class on its own. This way we will be able to read it anew, discovering in it the depth and power the Pope wanted to lay in it.
2- The Eros in Love with the Bridegroom
Here is the heart of the Encyclical: the extraordinary power of human eros, transformed by God’s passionate Desire (eros).
Christ came to seek out human eros to draw it, captivate it, heal it, and transform it. This is the foundation of Christian life! His choice was never in favour of a disembodied love! He went into the very depths of the human heart to invite it to fall in love with Him.
By incarnating Himself and becoming human, God assumed human eros, that is, the desire of man to love and be loved by another human being, man or woman.
Christ is the divine and human bridegroom, who has come to call every being to fall in love with Him. To strip Christian life of this fundamental dimension would be to decapitate it.
Instead, the Pope, with his first letter, has touched the very heart of life—both life in general and Christian life. When Christ defined Himself as the Bridegroom, He did not use a fascinating and romantic symbol! This is an immensely profound reality. Only by contemplating Mary and the Christian mystics, that is, all the saints, can we understand how their eros was assumed by Christ, engaged by Him, and transformed by His Spirit.
Every human being, man or woman, has within themselves a thirst to love and be loved by a fellow human being. The first indication that God gives us, which we too often forget to consider from this perspective, is that the human heart—this heart of flesh, this heart that longs to love and be loved—cannot be satisfied by human love except in Christ:
“You shall love the Lord your God [that is, Christ your Bridegroom] with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:37).
God did not say: “You shall love God with half your heart and give the other, more carnal half, to your wife or husband” (this refers to eros). Absolutely not! Christ came to claim not only the first half of our heart, the part we usually dedicate to God, but also the other half, which we think of giving to a man or a woman. He did not say: “You shall love God with half your heart and with the other half love your wife or husband!” No! He said: “I give all and take all. I am the true Bridegroom. It is I who created this deep thirst within you, and only I can quench it. Never let yourself be deceived into believing that this thirst can be satisfied (and thereby sink into a false or incomplete intoxication, or at best, something fleeting). Your heart is human, made of flesh and desires. Your heart is immense; it is I who made it, and only I am capable of fully meeting the expectations of your heart. I, who hold within Me the two dimensions of your heart—carnal and divine—am both man and God at the same time.”
3- The Samaritan Woman, or the Seduced Eros
Let’s see how Christ behaves with the Samaritan woman in chapter 4 of the Gospel of John. He speaks to her about the Living Water. This Water is the Holy Spirit, the Fire of Love that He came to give on earth! It is His very Love that He came to give. But under what conditions can we receive the Love of Christ? Let’s look at this more closely.
After an initial dialogue between Christ and the Samaritan woman, the focus shifts to the Water: “Jesus answered her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again; the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’” (John 4:13-15).
If human eros seeks a love other than the Love of Christ, it will continue to thirst, moving from one love to another, searching for authentic love and will be disappointed each time! Here, Christ is describing the workings of the human heart. On one side, man seeks love, but does not know that he cannot ask creatures for a divine-human Love. Only the God-Man, the divine Bridegroom, possesses the Love that quenches thirst! Anyone who drinks from the love of another human being will still thirst more and more. The Love that the Bridegroom gives extinguishes our thirst: the person will no longer feel the thirst that sends them on a quest for love from another! Human eros is in fact human-divine, made in the image and likeness of the Son of Man, of this God made man, of this divine Bridegroom. Human eros, that is, this desire and thirst to love (divine desires and thirsts), is indeed deposited by God in us. Only a God-man can quench this thirst once and for all! Thus, anyone who has found the authentic Bridegroom, anyone who has found the divine Well of divine-human Love, no longer needs to seek Love elsewhere. The Bridegroom comes to dwell in the divine-human heart, transformed, expanded, and purified eros to become a divine, loving Dwelling. Now dwelling in this human heart, He becomes in it a Spring of welling Love. A shocking transformation: the burning thirst that every human being feels in searching for the Love of their life, true Love, this terrible thirst, the suffering of every human being, deep and intense dissatisfaction, this desire is not only healed, satisfied, and filled, but also transformed into a Source that gives Love, into the power and capacity to love, in the ability to transform others and society! This was the secret that animated the saints: they had met the Bridegroom and, seduced by Him, they had allowed Him to enter their homes or rather, the house[1] of Her who had given birth to Him (because they had now been transformed in her), and since they had become the Bride of the Bridegroom, they had found in Him, who now dwelt in them, a Source of fertility, of self-giving, of transformation, of illumination for others, of love for others!
It is evident that at this point in the dialogue with Christ, every human being would fervently say: “But give me this Love, be my Bridegroom.” “Sir,” said the woman, “give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” (John 4:15) And this is exactly the point that Christ is about to touch. “Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come here.’” (John 4:16). But has He changed the subject? Did He want first to resolve a moral issue? No! He stays on the same line of discussion, a direct and deep dialogue that touches the eros of this woman, her desire to love and to be loved by a man! You ask Me for Love, you ask Me for this Water that will extinguish your thirst! But I ask you for your heart, your desire for love, your ability to love a man. This is what I ask of you! I too am thirsty; I thirst for your human heart. I am able to quench your thirst to love! But you, where do you keep your heart? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21). Where is your husband? Go and find him! Tell Me to whom your heart is bound, to whom your eros is attached! Who is your husband? Who is your Bridegroom?
He sends her back to herself: “Go!” enter your heart! Seek and look in your heart, to whom it is attached, who is its spouse, who is its husband! Jesus here is not attempting to settle a moral issue! Not at all! He goes much deeper than a mere issue of moral uprightness! He asks the fundamental question, the question of the first commandment: Where is your heart? (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart”). Indeed, God, having become Man, the Bridegroom of Israel who has become human, has become an authentic Bridegroom! The prophecy has become a reality in Christ: God is Man, and thus He is also the authentic Bridegroom, able to satisfy the thirst of the human being, of the whole human being, whether married or not, this is another question: because it is the whole human heart that is called to love the Bridegroom and not just half of the heart! It is not a matter of an altruistic love, of only the upper half of our heart, with which we love God, leaving the lower half of our heart, the eros, waiting and searching for another human being! Absolutely not! It is with the whole human heart, both the upper and lower parts, that we are called to love the Bridegroom and be filled with His Love.
Here are the profound words that Christ says to each of us: “Go, call your husband, and come here” (John 4:16) “Go” to your heart, enter the deepest desire to love that is in your heart and then “come back” with this desire, this eros that is in you and tell Me what you want to do with it! Because it is on the condition that you give Me your eros that you will receive the Love that can satisfy it.
I have come to speak to the human heart, to the whole heart, and not just to its altruism! I have come to speak to its desire to love and be loved by a woman, by a man. For it is to this heart that I speak, it is to this heart that I have come to give the Fire of My Love. But if a person does not give Me this heart, how will I fill it? “Go, call your husband, and come here” (John 4:16)
“Go, call your husband, and come here” (John 4:16): here is the key to the Gospel, the key to entering the Kingdom of God. If you do not make yourself the Bride, if you do not seek Me as your only Bridegroom, then how will you receive My Spirit of Love, this Water that extinguishes your thirst to love?
Why do prostitutes enter the Kingdom before us? (Luke 21:31). They knew they were in illusion, they kept eros awake, even though it was never satisfied. Mary Magdalene was inhabited by seven demons (Luke 8:2; Mark 16:9), of course, the moral issue in her left much to be desired, agreed, but eros never lied in her who loved luxury, in a wealthy society. Eros knew it had never found the true husband, it knew it was sinking in a pleasure that each time made it more dried out and thirsty for true Love. But she had not found this Love! She had kept her desire awake! She passes before us because she is free! Yes, the true prostitutes, those who seek love and do not find it, yes, they enter the Kingdom before us! Their eros is intact, it seeks, seeks still the authentic husband, the Bridegroom. True prostitutes know that where they are, there is nothing but mud! But there they do not find the fundamental question of their being: they seek Love, the authentic Love, they are ready to give everything to find it, to give themselves to Him, to live by it.
Here is the work that the Pope invites us discreetly to do in ourselves: do not fall asleep on your eros, do not set it aside, you would risk missing the essential point of Christian life, because Christ did not come to speak to the upper part of our heart, but to all our heart and especially to the lower part! He took everything upon Himself, He spoke to our whole being, He engages it, seduces it, makes it fall in love. Thus, here is the first step to take to fulfil the new commandment: “Go, call your husband, and come here” (John 4:16): it is the entrance door. It is the narrow door: be honest and go search for your heart, go search for your eros, do not let it wander, go search for your eros, your capacity and desire to love and know that it is through it and with it that you will be able to receive the authentic Love you are seeking.
The Pope stands strongly against the risk of neglecting eros, of putting it aside! This would perhaps be the most precious gift that God has placed in the human being, and yet we prefer to bury it under the sand or give it to loves or a love that is not the authentic Bridegroom: Jesus.
With this Encyclical, which centres around this issue of eros, the Pope brings us back to the heart of the Gospel and its extraordinary power of transformation! We have forgotten to give our eros to Christ the Bridegroom. And that is why Love has withered in us! If God is Love, the Bridegroom of Israel, YHWH, has become the human-divine Bridegroom: Jesus. The Pope, with courage as surprising as it is praiseworthy, confronts the heart of our life! The powerful strength of Christ’s divine Love can enter and act in us only if we give Him our hearts and desires.
Let us now examine the journey that eros takes to fall in love with Christ. The Pope reminds us of the existence of a path.
4- The God-Eros Opens the Way Back to Him
When God asks Abraham to offer his son in sacrifice on the mountain, He clearly reveals the dimension of His Love-Eros. He asks for something that touches him “viscerally,” the thing that costs the most to the human being. Similarly, when He asks St. Teresa of the Child Jesus to offer Him her father, He asks for the thing that is most dear to her.
In the following passages from the letters of St. Thérèse, we can glimpse the intensity of her suffering due to the mental illness that afflicted her father and how she interpreted this as God’s request to give Him also and above all the affection she had for her earthly father, who was at the centre of her affections:
“But I know well why the good God sends us this trial: it is to help us earn Heaven; He knows that our dearly beloved Father is all that we love most on earth, but He also knows well that we must suffer to gain eternal life, and that is why He tries us in everything we hold most dear.” (Letter of 25 November 1888)
“Jesus has sent us the cross, chosen in the best way He could invent with His immense love. How could we complain when He Himself was considered a man struck by God and humiliated? (reference to Isa 53:4)” (Letter of 18 July 1890)
“Ah, Celine!… Three years ago our souls had not yet been broken, happiness was still possible for us on earth, but Jesus sent us a look of love, a look veiled in tears, and this look became for us an ocean of suffering, but also an ocean of grace and love. He took from us the one we loved so tenderly, in a way even more painful than when He took our dearly beloved mother from us in the spring of our lives. But was it not so that we could truly say: ‘Our Father who art in Heaven’? (Mt 6:9) Oh, how comforting this word is! What an infinite horizon it opens to our eyes!” (Letter of 26 April 1891)
It does not matter at all whether human eros is invested in the love of a spouse or lover, it can also be the love for a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, etc… Every human being has a point in their emotional sphere that is dearer to them than all the others! At the most beautiful moment, here comes the God-Eros to ask for it, precisely to purify and elevate their human eros to the dimension of the God-Eros.
“God said, ‘Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you.'” (Gn 22:2). In this sense, every human being has their Isaac, the being they hold most dear, to which they are closely bound! This is not at all a sinful attachment! Abraham does not sin in his attachment to his son, nor does St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, nor those who love in the light of God. But the God-Eros also asks for this healthy and blessed attachment, because He wants to raise the human being to His level, for the heart of man is created only for God and not for a human being, no matter how holy or good they may be!
It may be found that the request God makes to Abraham or to Thérèse is of an unheard-of cruelty! Humanly speaking, this judgment would be true. However, we must remember a point of capital importance, which is like the key that unlocks the meaning of who the human being is and who God is for him: the human being was created in the image and likeness of not another creature, but of God Himself! This makes the human heart a Sanctuary that God wants to inhabit alone. On the other hand, the first commandment clearly declares the absolute that God represents for the heart of man: you shall love your God with “all” your heart, “all” your soul, “all” your thoughts, “all” your strength. Let us take note of how these “all” are repeated to better remind man that the first place cannot be occupied by any creature, no matter how holy or good it may be. Only God can occupy the first place; only the infinite has its seat in our heart! And the human being finds himself without resources, in front of the “erotic,” “totalitarian” dimension of God! There are situations that create attachments in the human heart (however absolutely legitimate), in front of which he would prefer to be just human, and nothing more than human, to love and be loved and to enjoy this love! However, the moment comes when God tears him away from himself, calls him back to Himself, and demands that man respond to His greatness: “Your heart is made for Me: do you want this?”
Therefore, Abraham behaved with God as He truly is, namely the God-Eros, the only one who has the right to the human heart and who forbids any idolatry, even legitimate (i.e., love for someone so dear to us that they occupy the first place in our heart). God then, when He sees that Abraham has responded to the challenge of returning to God, to the authentic God-Eros, to God who is the absolute of the human heart, swears by Himself (Gn 22:16). This act is a very strong and elevated gesture that is difficult for us to comprehend: swearing by Himself! What can it mean for God, for a God, to swear by His own name? It is an absolute act of Promise on the part of God, of Promise and fidelity in the Gift. Abraham positions himself as the Father of all humanity, the one who underwrites the possibility of “returning” to the lost Paradise. Abraham takes on the role of the true Spouse of God. This absolute nuptial relationship with the God-Eros generates an extraordinary, overwhelming fertility because it is the very fertility of God. Abraham reaches the purity of not putting anything before God, and this virginal purity makes him able to marry God and consequently to generate, for God and in God, an infinite multitude of children of God, believers.
“I swear by Myself, declares the Lord: because you have done this and have not refused your son, your only son, I will bless you with every blessing and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore; your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. All nations on earth will be blessed through your descendants, because you have obeyed my voice.” (Gn 22:16-18)
5- Who is God?
Only mystics have had the knowledge of the true God, because the deep transformation of their being has elevated their knowledge of God from a human mode to a divine mode. The Pope refers to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and we could also cite St. John of the Cross, a Mystic Doctor, and many others. All agree in highlighting this “new knowledge” of God.
The Pope, as an authentic mystic, implicitly addresses the question of knowledge in a divine mode. He explicitly shows us how God desires man and moves in search of him (DCE 9-10.12).
“God is for us,” says St. Paul (Rm 8:31), meaning that God desires us. God searches for us. “Whoever of you seeks God, know that He has been anticipated and sought before he himself sought Him” (St. Bernard, Sermon 84 on the Song of Songs, 2). And again: “First of all, it must be known that if the soul seeks God, her Beloved seeks her even more. If the soul directs to Him her ardent desires of love, which are pleasing to Him like a column of smoke that exhales the fragrance of myrrh and incense and all aromatic powder (Ct 3,6), the Beloved sends her the fragrance of His perfumes which draw her to Him (Ct 1,3-4)” (Living Flame B, 3,27).
“In Jesus Christ, God Himself pursues ‘the lost sheep,’ the suffering and lost humanity. When Jesus in His parables speaks of the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, the woman who searches for the coin, the father who goes to meet the prodigal son and embraces him, these are not merely words, but they constitute the explanation of His very being and acting” (DCE 12).
St. Augustine and Pascal will affirm: “You would not seek me if you had not already found me” (in you) (Pensées, section VII, no. 555). And we have not been sought by Christ once and for all, but we are constantly sought by Him, says St. Bernard in the same sermon 84 on the Song of Songs. “I am lost, the lost sheep, come and seek your servant” (Ps 118, 176). “It is He who loved us first” (1 Jn 4,19).
Moreover, the Name of God in the Old Testament, YHWH, is a verb that means: to desire, to thirst, to experience passion, to be intoxicated with the beloved! This is what He says to Moses: “YHWH passed before him, proclaiming: ‘YHWH, YHWH, God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger and rich in love and faithfulness'” (Ex 34:6)[2]. The text repeats the Name of God revealed to Moses twice: YHWH, YHWH, and then gives him two similar explanations, almost echoing the name that is “pronounced” before Moses, that is, “manifested” within Moses in a mystical experience: “ilah rahoum hanoun”, “God-viscera”[3] who exercises tenderness. The very meaning of the term YHWH is revealed to us: God “introduces us into His bowels.”[4] It is like saying “Fire of Devouring Love, which transforms in Him what it grasps.” He integrates us into Himself, into His own Matrix… the place where the mother carries the child. It is, therefore, a thirst, a desire, certainly, but He also introduces us into Himself. He exercises His tenderness. This is His nature. “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart,” tender.
This is the thirst that in the Gospel of John Christ reveals to us at least twice: to the Samaritan woman He expresses His thirst: “Give me a drink” (Jn 4:7), and on the Cross He repeats it to every human being: “I thirst” (Jn 19:28). He thirsts to love, thirsts to give Himself, thirsts to desire us, to consume us. He is a devouring Fire of Love[5], for He is Desire.
“Jesus” is the name of YHWH incarnate, made man. It is the incarnate name of the God-desire. It is His human face: “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk 22:15). “I have come to bring fire on the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49). “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed” (Lk 12:50). This is why He gives Himself the Name of Bridegroom! Because He goes in search of His Bride, He thirsts for her, He desires her, He wants her!
“Jesus” means “God saves,” the angel tells Joseph in the dream. But to save is to come and take and bring back to Himself! And God is a Fire that devours! If He saves us, it means that He introduces us into the devouring Fire that He is!
6- Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Discovery of the Face of God
After many years of experiencing God, Thérèse is still called to deepen her knowledge of Him, and this is realized through a grace that she receives from the Lord on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity in 1895. Here is how she describes it: “This year, on June 9th, the feast of the Holy Trinity, I received the grace to understand more than ever how Jesus desires to be loved” (Ms A, 84r°).
Does this mean that before she had no notion of “how Jesus desires to be loved”? It would be wrong to think so. She herself says that throughout her life, she has done nothing but give love to God and that from the age of three, she never denied anything to God! This may confuse us. So what does this new understanding that she receives consist of? Let’s listen to her instead.
“I thought of the souls that offer themselves as victims to God’s Justice to remove the punishments reserved for the guilty and to attract them to themselves, and this offering seemed great and generous, but I was far from feeling called to do it.”
She first recalls the generosity of those who offer themselves, but that is not enough. It is necessary to know for what, to whom, one offers oneself, which God, which image of God!
“Oh my God,” I cried deep in my heart, “will it only be Your Justice that will receive the souls who immolate themselves as victims?”
Thus, she shifts the angle under which she sees God. It is not that she opposes Justice and Love, but she realizes that she knows God more profoundly, thanks to the grace He gives her to understand Him better. The grace that God gives her allows her to penetrate into God’s “bowels.” God’s mercy thirsts to give itself. She perceives the “need” God has. She invokes the “rejection” He suffers, the fact of being misunderstood! Oh yes, how misunderstood, despised, this God is, of whom the Pope speaks with such passion in his Encyclical, this God passionate for man. How little the image of a vulnerable God is honored, who thirsts to give Himself to the human being and to love.
“Does Your merciful love not even need it?… From all sides, He is misunderstood, rejected.”
Human Eros is Given to Human Beings! It is Not Given to God!
Human eros is reserved for oneself or for human love! It is not given to God! And Thérèse understands this! She wants to honor God’s Eros, His thirst, and she can only do this through her own eros: “The hearts to whom You desire to pour it out turn to creatures, asking them for happiness with their miserable affection, instead of throwing themselves into Your arms and accepting Your infinite Love…”
How bold Thérèse is! She who wanted to love Christ as never before, we find her in the arms of Christ on every page of her writings! Have we ever fully realised the boldness of this attitude? Yes, on every page of her writings, we find her in the arms of Christ. A few years ago, it was fashionable to psychoanalyse everything, and even Thérèse was examined and defined in all sorts of ways! So, for once at least, why not define her with the authentic name she deserves: Bride of Christ, Bride of His Heart, she who allowed all her femininity, all her eros, to be expressed, yes, all her eros directed towards Christ.
And here, this grace that makes her penetrate deeply into the heart of God makes her perceive a strange phenomenon: Love (the very essence of God) is like compressed within His Heart! Love, by nature, must give itself, it is expansive! And so, God admits Thérèse to His deepest intimacy and makes her understand His desire to give Himself and the fact that He finds no people, no human eros, capable of receiving this Love in its fullness: “Oh my God! Will Your despised Love remain in Your Heart? It seems to me that if You found souls who offered themselves as victims of Holocaust to Your Love, You would consume them quickly.”
Let us admire this “quickly.” God’s thirst, His desire, is so strong that He would consume in His Fire of Love the people, the hearts, the human eros that offer themselves to the action of His Love! And here she reaches the peak: “It seems to me that You would be happy not to compress the waves of infinite tenderness within You…”
But who told her that He would be happy? She, who has spent her life “pleasing God,” now is admitted into the Secret of secrets: “You would be happy”…! This phrase is to be meditated upon. Who has shown us the “waves of infinite tenderness within God”? This is staggering! The grace Thérèse received that day was of extraordinary depth! How vulnerable God becomes in the hands of Thérèse! What a mystery! He showed her how the “waves of infinite tenderness” are “compressed” “within Him!”
The grace she received makes her penetrate in a new and deep way into verses 6 and 7 of Psalm 36: “Lord, Your love is in the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches to the skies; Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, Your justice like the great deep” (Ps 36:6-7). “If Your Justice desires to be satisfied, it extends only over the earth, how much more does Your Merciful Love long to set souls ablaze, for Your Mercy rises to the heavens…”
She understands that in God, Love extends far beyond the space occupied by justice. Indeed, Love reaches to the Heavens! Love reaches the very Heart of God and introduces us there. The Face of God, revealed to us by Love (Eros, desire), allows us to penetrate deeply into Him. Without distancing ourselves from Thérèse’s thought, let us recall that verse in which Christ implicitly asks us to involve the depth of our eros in order to enter the depths of God: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:20). The new righteousness is the discovery of God’s Love, this deep desire that God has for us, and the discovery that in order to respond to this desire, we must give ourselves with all our human strength to love, with all our eros! Our eros is the human heart, deep, carnal, called to fall in love with God, with Christ. In this way, our eros can “conquer” God, and be on His level, offering Him what He holds most dear! Then God will reveal Himself, showing us all His vulnerability, all His divine desire!
“Oh my Jesus! Let me be that happy victim, consume Your Holocaust with the fire of Your Divine Love!…”
God revealed Himself to Thérèse, she understood His Heart, the Divine Eros, she saw it, she grasped it, and then responded totally: “Let it be me”… and she gave herself completely (“victim,” “holocaust,” “consume”).
Let us note how she describes God here: “Fire of Your Divine Love.” And the result is not long in coming: “Dear Mother, she who allowed me to offer myself thus to God, knows that the waves, or rather the oceans, of grace have come to flood my soul… Since that happy day, it seems that Love penetrates me and surrounds me, it seems that at every moment this Merciful Love renews me, purifies my soul, and leaves no trace of sin…”
It was audacious to receive such grace and explore the gratuity of God’s Love, His infinite desire to give Himself to us! And here, even Benedict XVI urges us in this direction. Happy are we, if we know how to believe Him and offer ourselves “thus” to the Good God. Thérèse seems to have opened the floodgates of heaven: “the waves, or rather the oceans, of grace” “came to flood” her soul! The key to it all is contained in this little “thus.” Offering oneself thus, understanding that this is the true image of God (the crazy desire He has for us), believing in this image and even more: offering oneself!
“To live in an act of perfect Love, I offer myself as a victim of holocaust to Your Merciful Love, begging You to consume me unceasingly, letting the waves of infinite tenderness contained in You overflow into my soul, so that I may become a Martyr of Your Love, O God!…
This martyrdom, after preparing me to appear before You, may finally make me die, and my soul may then leap, without delay, into the eternal embrace of Your Merciful Love… I want, O Beloved, with every heartbeat to renew this offering a number of infinite times, until, when the shadows are gone, I can tell You again my Love in an eternal Face to Face!” (Prayers, 6).
7- Difficult to Believe in Such Love
John of the Cross
It may seem difficult for us to believe that this is the true image of God, so much so that it appears overwhelming. Pseudo-Dionysius, whom the Pope quotes, clearly emphasizes that the mystical understanding of God is a lofty knowledge that not everyone possesses.
St. John of the Cross, in his final work, which is somewhat his (to use the Pope’s terminology) “erotic” testament, repeats several times that the reader will not be able to believe in this image of God and that He acts in such a way in the heart of man! The saint never ceases to uncover for us the secrets of God. One of these is that the only desire of the Flame of the Holy Spirit is to caress the soul! We might be surprised by such a statement from the doctor of “Nada.” He, who in all his writings fights against “tastes” and the search for consolation[6], reveals himself in a completely different light in the pages of The Living Flame of Love. Everything in its time! After the radical purification of the night of the spirit, there are no more dangers for the soul[7]. The Lord “changes the way of watering his little flower,” as St. Thérèse of Lisieux would say[8]. Although said in a different context and regarding another turn in the spiritual journey, John of the Cross’ observation could be understood this way: “Once the soul reaches this state, it must follow a method different from the one previously adopted” (Living Flame B III,33).
We see a single desire of the Spirit: “care,” the concern of love, “which Love proposes consists in making a wound and wounding the wound.”[9] Harsh medicine, but, nonetheless, full of delights. “The cautery of love does not cease in its office, which is to provide the soul with new touches and wounds of love.” Note that he speaks of “his office” as if it were his only one. This is then confirmed: “The effect of the burn of love is to soothe[10] the wound, as a good doctor does […] a wound all the more delightful the more ardent and sublime the fire of love that produced it. It is the Holy Spirit who brings it about solely to caress the soul, and because his desire and will to caress are great, so too will the wound be great, for great are the delights he grants” (FVB II,7).
The Saint unveils for us the deep desire of God, of the Spirit. The perspective he opens to us immerses us in a completely new feeling, previously unknown. It is a kind of divine intoxication. The terms he uses are strong and clear. “Care,” to designate the concern of the spirit, its occupation. “Office,” as if to designate a function, a profession, a way of acting and serving. “Effect,” which is the result of this “doctor’s” profession, of the same “good doctor.” “He did it for this only good end” (Spanish: habiéndola hecho […] solo a fin de), unequivocal terms. This phrase: “The desire and the will are great” is directed to those who may have doubts about the intensity of God’s desire, of His Fire of Love, the Holy Spirit.
One gets the impression that the saint resorts to all the terms available in human language to reassure the incredulous, to convey to them a certainty—the certainty of God’s foolish tenderness, His love games—as well as their extent. The saint senses the objection that might be raised against him: this seems impossible, it’s too beautiful to be true. No. To speak and affirm this ineffable tenderness of God, the Saint does not spare words and expressions. They crowd his pen, intertwining with one another to loudly proclaim the incredible.
The vocation of the “Living Flame” is a difficult and testing one, namely, to provoke an act of faith, to try to win the adherence of ordinary mortals to unheard-of things! This work remains there as a “stumbling block.” The Saint knows this, and at the beginning of his work, he senses the objections (see Prol, 2). This premonition repeatedly comes under his pen: for example, see FVB I,5; I,15-16; II,5; II,21; II,36; III,2. “No other author has been as concerned with the objection: ‘but they won’t believe it […]’”[11] He affirms it, cites Scripture—which in this case is his only point of support—but the reader is left with no other help than that, obscure, of faith. One can believe, or one can choose not to, and who could reproach them except God and His saints? Thus, there is no middle way. “And since rare things, of which one has little experience, evoke more wonder and seem less credible, […]” (FVB I,15). Yes, the fundamental vocation of the Fiery Flame is to make us “glimpse,” “expressed theologically,” the action of God deep within the soul, and therefore, to invite us to adhere to what the text tells us. In a sense, St. John of the Cross describes what we must believe. He describes how far God would like to go within us.
It is shocking to assert that God has no other ambition than His action, no other purpose than to caress our soul, to rejoice it, to fill it with delights!
To show the strength of God’s desire, he tells us that the cautery burns “everything that can burn, to caress all that can” (FVB II,8). God does not want there to remain anything in the soul that is not “caressable” without Him “caressing” it! He embraces all that is “matter to caress.” Now, everything that is in the soul is caressable, and He will reach even the innermost depths of its substance.
And finally, this caress is “great,” “because the fire of love that caresses you according to your capacity and greatness is infinite” (FVB II,8), and the wound is “all the more caressingly deep the more the cautery touches the deepest centre of the substance of the soul […]” (ibid.).
8- The Nuptial Realisation
Let us now address a fundamental point in the life of every Christian, and even more so in the spiritual journey of the priest.
The priest is called to follow Christ, to receive Him, to live in Him, and to give Him to others, teaching them to welcome Him, to live in Him, and to pass Him on to others! Therefore, the priest is called to live a close, indeed intimate, relationship with Christ. It is important, then, to clarify a fundamental aspect present in the relationship between the priest and Jesus, which the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est highlights in an exceptional way.
Christ, as we know, calls to Himself those who will follow and serve Him. “It is I who have chosen you, not you who have chosen me” (Jn 15:16). “He called to Himself those whom He wanted” (Mk 3:13). Certainly, He calls all human beings, because He did not die on the cross just for some, but for all. In this sense, what applies to each one applies to the priest, and what applies to the priest, in his relationship with Christ, applies to each one of us.
The priest is a baptized man, called to “love with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his strength” Christ. The intimate relationship that binds the man to Christ is the most personal and intimate relationship that can exist; it is even deeper than the relationship between two spouses! These are one flesh, one soul, but their bond is fully realized by Christ on the Cross: there, and in every Communion, He gives us His body, His soul, His spirit, His divinity! All this far surpasses the mutual gift of spouses in a human marriage, even the highest one! In the call to follow Christ is an absolutely intimate and personal relationship that modifies and transforms the deep fabric of the man. This fact has led spiritual and mystical authors to use very strong expressions such as: “union,” “transformation,” “divinization,” “becoming God by participation,” “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (and the Pope, as an authentic mystic, takes up these expressions in his Encyclical).
A constant feature in mystical and spiritual writings is the fact that they do not hesitate for a second to call Christ “Spouse.” In this, they are only reflecting the gift contained in baptism, which is a total immersion of our being in Christ, in the Trinity. The expression “Spouse” is repeatedly used in the Scriptures, both in the Old and in the New Testament. The latter attributes it very clearly and repeatedly to Christ, and its non-symbolic value recurs both in the Bible and in the Mystics. This expression does not refer to a human marriage but to a higher example of the latter. In the ceremonies in which a woman takes religious vows, calling the woman “bride” does not have a “consolatory” meaning that she is not married and will not have children born of her flesh! No, absolutely not! The marriage between Christ and every human being is the foundational reality, the true and only nuptial bond, the most intimate relationship between two beings. It is the marriage between a man and a woman that is made in the image of this nuptial union with Christ, not the other way around. The reality is baptism (which is a marriage), and the figure is the marriage between a man and a woman in Christ. This is the sense in which St. Paul speaks of marriage as a great mystery![12] Therefore, we live in a nearly constant reversal of values. We do not realize the degree of intimacy that exists (and should exist!) between Christ and each of us! The union that should bind Christ to each of us is infinitely more intimate and deeper than that which unites two Christian spouses! That is why we speak of the “wedding garment” when referring to the baptismal robe, and why the one being baptized is dressed in a long white garment.
Now, what does the nuptial relationship with Christ practically mean for us? What do we notice when listening to someone like Thérèse of Lisieux talk about Christ, or Gemma Galgani, Clare of Assisi, or Catherine of Siena? Their being “Brides of Christ” does not simply carry a meaning of “symbolic romanticism” or “consolation prize,” but this nuptial bond is very present, complete, and alive. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux engages with Christ as a woman would with her husband! She loves Him with all her heart, with her sensitivity, her femininity, etc… This stands out clearly and undeniably. The intimacy that the saints experience with Christ is nuptial, intimate, personal, and complete. Of course, we are not referring to any sexual aspect in the sense of “genitality.”[13] However, all other aspects of the person are involved: the heart, emotions, imagination, complementarity (since He is a man, they are women), etc… In a word: their eros is fully engaged in their relationship with Christ. All their eros is captivated by Him, drawn to Him, and dragged to follow Him, by a force of Love that comes from Him, such that they love Him “with all their heart,” “with all their being,” without any difficulty! In one word, explicitly stated: they are female, and He is male. The man: the most beautiful, the most perfect, the most intelligent, the most powerful, the most seductive, the most divine! It can truly be said that they have found their “prince charming,” whom they can love completely as women. Those who have embarked on this path understand well how the objection from those who have not had the same experience holds no weight: “But I need to feel Him, to touch Him.”[14] If Saint Teresa of Jesus spent so much time describing the action of God in her and in each of us, and if to express this action she used terms from the human “loving” vocabulary, it is certainly not to generate confusion as it happens to some. She was simply trying to show that the intimate relationship with Christ is palpable and to highlight what it offers to the human being. In her own way, she affirms that nothing in the world would make the person who experiences it change that relationship for a human one (without denying the beauty of human love and its legitimate joys).
As we can see, this topic is delicate and important, and the Pope addresses it head-on in his Encyclical, but with tact and grace. To ignore this subject would truly mean killing Christianity, because it would “kill” both John the Evangelist and St. Paul in one blow. The Book of Song of Songs would be eliminated from the Bible! Yet, for Christian life, it is impossible to eliminate these books and these authors. And, paradoxically, these are male authors, not female, who wrote the Gospel of John, St. Paul’s letters, the Song of Songs! This is a real paradox, because these are the most intimate, passionate, “feminine,”[15] and most fundamental texts for the Christian faith! So, this is certainly a delicate subject, but vital, without which Christianity would die out! And God knows very well what happens when the goal of life is not union with Christ! The Pope describes the union with God as follows:
“Yes, there is a unification of man with God – the original dream of man – but this unification is not a merging together, not sinking into the anonymous ocean of the Divine; it is a unity that creates love, in which both – God and man – remain themselves and yet become fully one”: “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him,” says St. Paul (1 Cor 6:17)” (DCE 10).
9. And What About Males?
How does all this concern the life of the priest (or any male believer)? This issue touches very closely on the heart of the matter. We can consider it the fundamental question of the priestly life, the keystone for many things, the explanation of almost every aspect of it! If those women fell in love with Christ, if their entire femininity was seduced, if all their being was taken and attracted to Christ, what, for example, can the young man who feels called by Christ do? (Let’s consider the priest before his ordination). If those women encountered their Divine “Prince Charming,” if, as females, their whole femininity was taken and seduced by Christ, for a young man who feels Christ’s call, this represents a mystery, a difficulty! The Church has lived for 2000 years without addressing this difficulty explicitly—and the Pope approaches this issue with unparalleled boldness! A man is a man, and at least 9 out of 10 men are heterosexual and naturally attracted to the opposite sex! The advantage that a woman has with Christ becomes a terrible and illusory disadvantage for 9 out of 10 men! A woman who follows Christ can think without much difficulty that she has met her “prince charming.” She can love Him with all her femininity, with all her female heart, as a wife and mother. And God knows that a woman is different from a man! There is a human reality, down-to-earth, that cannot be overlooked! A point so simple yet so decisive! The heterosexual man is in no way capable of loving Christ the way a woman can! Anyone who denies this denies the Incarnation[16]! They deny that the call to love God engages all our being, including eros, and not just our higher intellectual or spiritual faculties, as Benedict XVI rightly emphasized! The man also has his heart, his feelings, desires, impulses—in short, his eros! It is too easy to conclude that all this finds its solution in another man (Jesus)! Eros cannot be elevated by another man! This is a real human problem! Christ asks us to love Him with all our being—including eros. Yet we know well that our heart, our human heart of flesh, has a sensitivity, a desire to love and be loved by a woman, and only a limited mindset can deny this fact! The solution proposed throughout the Church’s history has been to “adapt”: to “remove” the “lower” part of our being (eros) and elevate our spiritual and intellectual energy toward Christ, often immersing ourselves completely, like in a drug, in the service of Christ, to forget that we have a human heart, which always experiences a sense of absence.
Some have chosen to replace this role with the person of Mary. For many, this seems an “acceptable solution,” which is in fact a false one, because quite simply, Mary is not God! Falling in love with Mary, for a man, is not the same as a woman falling in love with Christ, because quite simply, Christ is God, and Mary cannot replace Christ, now or ever. This implies that the man remains with all his so-called “lower” energy and his masculine heart unused![17] And what is removed cannot be transformed! “The natural instinct, once banished, returns with a vengeance.” It is instead good to transform it, to stir it, as the Pope clearly suggests, while leaving it unused creates frustrated, bitter, and sour individuals. How many priests risk converting this “sacred” energy in them into a will to power, into other pleasures, or into the “drug” of activism! But one cannot lie to oneself, just as one cannot lie to God. Talents have been given to man: a fleshly heart, sexual[18], normal, and “in good health,” sensitive, waiting to be called as well, but without a “princess of fairy tales”! And so this heart remains unused or, at best, deviated from its function. Who could deny this fact? We are faced with a colossal problem if we want to be truly honest and upright men, confronting our entire being without adopting the ostrich policy! Sexual energy (and not only genital!), erotic energy, is either unused or at least underused in the young man who begins to follow Christ and one day will become His priest! He interprets his call to celibacy in such a way that certain areas of his being remain untapped by grace.
On the other hand, the woman is greatly advantaged![19] She can give Christ her ‘sexual energy’ (her eros), her feminine heart, as a Bride, her imagination, her feelings; she can, in a word, have a ‘loving relationship’ with Christ, which fills her entire being.[20] But for the man, it seems that nothing of the sort is possible! Let us say it out loud: this is a serious problem, and we cannot continue to maintain the ostrich policy. In this sense, we must absolutely praise and appreciate the Pope’s bold frankness. If his frankness and audacity are received for what they truly are, this Encyclical could become a very strong source of energy for renewal in the Church.
Before addressing a new point, it is useful to summarise the discussion thus far: by describing the character and quality of the relationship we are called to have with Christ and the implications this entails, we find a very beautiful and concrete example in the saints who followed the Lord and fully lived the ‘Song of Songs’: but when it comes to transmitting the nuptial nature of the relationship with Christ to others, we face false solutions! Here is ‘the state of the question,’ the status quaestionis. Yet, there truly is a solution to this problem, and the Pope shows us the way by pointing us back to the Christian Mystical Tradition and its transformative power over eros.
10 – Becoming the Bride
To address this problem, we must examine an anthropological characteristic of the human being (male or female), namely the fact that both a masculine and a feminine component are simultaneously present in each person, as often pointed out by Pope John Paul II.
The Word of God tells us: “God created man in His image; in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen 1:27). Therefore, every human being, male and female, has within them both a masculine and a feminine side. This is how, in a passage from his beautiful letter to women, Mulieris Dignitatem, Pope John Paul II explains the “masculinity” and “femininity” inherent in every human being, man and woman.
John Paul II: “Every human being is the ‘Bride'”
“Christ entered into this history and remains in it as the Bridegroom who ‘gave Himself.’ To ‘give’ means to ‘become a sincere gift’ in the most complete and radical way: ‘Greater love has no one than this’ (John 15:13). In this conception, through the Church, all human beings – both women and men – are called to be the ‘Bride’ of Christ, the redeemer of the world. In this way, ‘being a bride,’ and thus the ‘feminine,’ becomes a symbol of all that is ‘human,’ according to the words of Paul: ‘There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3:28).
From a linguistic standpoint, it can be said that the analogy of spousal love according to the Letter to the Ephesians refers what is ‘masculine’ to what is ‘feminine,’ since, as members of the Church, men too are included in the concept of the ‘Bride.’ And this should not surprise us, because the apostle, to express his mission in Christ and in the Church, speaks of ‘the children he gives birth to in pain’ (cf. Gal 4:19). In the realm of what is ‘human,’ of what is personally human, ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ are distinguished, and at the same time, they complete and explain each other. This is also present in the great analogy of the ‘Bride’ in the Letter to the Ephesians. In the Church, every human being – male and female – is the ‘Bride,’ as they receive in gift the love of Christ the redeemer, as well as in their response, through the gift of their own person.
Christ is the Bridegroom. In this, the truth about God’s love is expressed, the love that ‘loved first’ (1 John 4:19) and with the gift born of this spousal love for man, has surpassed all human expectations: ‘He loved them to the end’ (John 13:1). The Bridegroom – the Son consubstantial with the Father as God – became the Son of Mary, ‘son of man,’ true man, male. The symbol of the Bridegroom is male. In this masculine symbol, the human character of love in which God expressed His divine love for Israel, for the Church, and for all mankind is depicted. By reflecting on what the Gospels say about Christ’s attitude towards women, we can conclude that, as a man, son of Israel, He revealed the dignity of the ‘daughters of Abraham’ (cf. Luke 13:16), the dignity possessed by women from the ‘beginning’ on par with men. And at the same time, Christ highlighted all the originality that distinguishes women from men, all the richness given to them in the mystery of creation. In Christ’s attitude towards women, we see exemplified what the Letter to the Ephesians expresses through the concept of the ‘bride.’ Precisely because Christ’s divine love is the love of the Bridegroom, it is the paradigm and model for all human love, especially for the love of men.” (John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 25)
Every man possesses both masculinity and femininity, and the same applies to every woman. A man remains a man and masculine, and the fact that he has a feminine component within him does not imply that he is effeminate or will become so[21]. The same can be said of a woman! To better understand these two dimensions, present in everyone, we can “capture” Mary at two different moments in her life: at the moment of the Annunciation, where she reflects the most complete femininity, and at the moment of the Passion, at the foot of the Cross, where she expresses the most complete masculinity.
Let us contemplate what Mary demonstrates at the Annunciation: listening, receptivity, peace, deep reflection, sensitivity, total gift, etc… In fact, Mary at the Annunciation is given to us as the perfect example of femininity, or rather, of the feminine qualities of the human being. In the presence of the Eternal Word, she acts as the perfect Woman, the one who receives the Word in the most complete way and responds with all her femininity. During the Annunciation, she demonstrates a passivity of listening, which every believer – male or female – is called to imitate. In this way, a man, when he imitates Mary, allows feminine qualities to develop within himself, which do not distort his nature but rather enable him to delve more deeply into his innermost self and to discover the talents that God has deposited in him, so that the man may develop them in following Christ with his whole being and not just with a part of it. Because, indeed, within every man sleeps a femininity, a “woman” within him, which is still himself.
On the contrary, at the foot of the Cross, Mary is the supreme example of virility – and she is a woman! To follow Christ in these tragic moments, when the whole universe is in fury against Him and one’s life is at risk, certainly requires the greatest virility. Where are the men at the foot of the Cross? There is a majority of women at the foot of the Cross! Their love for the Bridegroom has made them so strong, so daring, so courageous, that they were able to face both the furious and murderous court and the executioner. Therefore, Mary shines as the supreme example of strength and virility. This is why we say that “virtue is virile” and that martyrs, both women and young girls, are “virile.” They are not diminished in their femininity; on the contrary, it shines in all its power. It is the femininity in them that welcomed love and responded to it completely. Their femininity, their feminine hearts, allowed their eros to be touched by the Love of Christ the Bridegroom and to respond to Him entirely. Authentic femininity, the femininity of Mary in them, made their eros awakened by Christ’s call and follow Him. By following Him day by day, out of Love, this love took root in them until they were able to manifest an undeniable faithfulness and “virility” at the moment of the great adversity of the Passion. Their femininity was not diminished, but on the contrary, it shines in all its power because it is the femininity that received the Love and responded to it completely. Mary, therefore, is the quintessential example of virility in following Christ. We can see that both virility and femininity are united in the same person, whether man or woman.
Furthermore, we can say that authentic masculinity has its roots[22] in authentic femininity, and there exists an intimate bond between them. It starts first with the femininity of the Annunciation, to receive the Word, to let it incarnate in us, let it grow, and become a robust tree! It is the feminine receptivity that allows eros to express itself fully toward Christ the Bridegroom, and thus authentic masculinity will be born in it, as a total, faithful, daring, and courageous response. It is in this sense that masculinity is born from femininity.
This reflection and the example of Mary before us immediately highlight false femininity and false masculinity! When Peter says during the Last Supper, “But I will give my life for you,” this is false masculinity! Peter, are you at the foot of the Cross? It is false femininity not to orient our being and our eros toward its fundamental Object: Christ the Bridegroom. False femininity develops when we desire to reach things other than the authentic Christ or when we reverse the growth process by imposing an early masculinization on ourselves. This means that false masculinity arises when we think we can start the following of Christ – the action, the activity, the projects – before we have let receptivity, listening, and docility to the Word of God grow within us! Thus, we see that false masculinity and false femininity end up converging. If femininity avoids its full realization and begins to imitate masculinity, it is the end for both!
11- The Eros of the Apostle
Everything said up to now leads us to consider the condition of the priest. As a man, he has both masculinity and femininity within himself. It happens that he is unaware of his own femininity, and even less aware of Christ’s call to allow it to develop. He is unaware of this “woman” within him, this mysterious aspect of his being that he ignores, that he even fears, and that scares him. He is called to love the Bridegroom, to serve Him with this heart of “woman” or “femininity” that sleeps within him. Truly, the Bridegroom is there knocking at the door of his human heart, his fleshly heart, his eros. Christ does not just knock at the door of the intellect or enthusiasm of this man, He knocks at the door of his human heart, his fleshly heart, his eros. Christ knocks at the door of this “woman” that is part of him and lies dormant within his being. But does he make the necessary space for her to expand and then open to Christ?
The virile man refuses to face this reality, for many reasons, often cultural. He fears it, he is afraid of it, he does not want to face it, he represses it, and he runs away from it. And yet it is part of him, part of his being. Can we reject it? When St. Paul speaks to husbands, he says, “Does anyone hate his wife?” “On the contrary, he takes care of her!” And what about the woman who lies deep within this young man whom Christ calls to become a priest or simply to follow Him (for these words are not only for the future priest but for every Christian)? Does he neglect her?
It is good to address the question of eros by following the Pope, who opens the way for us. His reflection raises a deep issue that requires courage and clarity from us. The more we honor our erotic dimension, which longs for Christ and thirsts to be transformed in Him, the more we will allow an energy, a passion, to unfold within us that will make us strong and faithful in following Christ.
Here is the text from St. Paul: “In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church!” So also, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies…” (Eph. 5:28-33).
St. Paul is right: “Let each one love his wife as himself.” The expression “as himself” calls for the love that one must have for oneself, that is, for our inner feminine dimension (whether we are male or female) or for the eros that seeks to be engaged by Christ. This is closely related to two points: 1) the first commandment, which essentially means to love oneself, and 2) the very act of creation (“God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27)).
Indeed, in the second commandment, He says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Since the first commandment (“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength”) does not explicitly say that one must love oneself, it follows that the first commandment is the best way to love oneself! For to “love God” means to expose all the components of one’s being (including femininity and eros) to His Love! This, then, is loving oneself!
But often, the human being resists loving their feminine side! They refuse to recognize it! “When a person encounters their own soul[23], they never recognize it but confuse it with the poor human beast that has incarnated the symbol unconsciously.” This is the whole reality of psychological projection. It is easier to project onto others, onto those who embody the symbol of femininity, rather than looking at oneself and the feminine side within us!
Thus, we see that the development of one’s feminine side is the key to accessing Christ, for the entire virile man and consequently for the priest (whose task is to make Christ the Bridegroom known). Only in this way can he live the loving relationship with Christ, which will give him the opportunity to grow and realize himself. This is how the desire expressed by the Pope in his Encyclical will be fulfilled: eros will be saved (by Christ).
For example, when we read the Spiritual Canticle by John of the Cross, we realize how deeply the saint allowed his feminine side to develop. This enables him to fully identify with the Bride who goes out in search of the Bridegroom! The intoxication of Christ’s Love can only be experienced to the extent that the person allows this feminine side of themselves to develop, fall in love with Christ, go out in search of Him like the Bride wounded by His arrows of love and consumed by the thirst to see Him! This is how St. John of the Cross, the Mystic Doctor, expresses the search for the Beloved made by the feminine aspect in us:
Where have you hidden Yourself, Beloved?
Alone here, moaning,
You have left me! Like the deer,
You fled, After wounding me;
I shouted, I chased You,
You had disappeared!
(Spiritual Canticle, 1)
Ah, who will heal me?
At last, grant Yourself truly;
And no longer send me
From today messengers
Who do not know how to tell me what I long for!
(Spiritual Canticle, 6)
Therefore, before speaking of the priest as the “Bridegroom of the Community,” of the priest as the “friend of Mary,” it is essential to see how the future priest becomes – in Mary – the Bride of Christ!! How can we entrust the priestly responsibility to a man, a vir, if he has not fallen in love with Christ? How can he make Christ known, if he himself has not known Him? And how can he know Him, only through his intellect? Or if his eros, in his life, has been put aside? The Priesthood is not a “job,” a “trade,” like many others, but it is a calling, a falling in love, a journey following the Bridegroom! It is not possible to “be a priest” if one does not have a deep and authentic relationship with Christ! The priest is exposed to great dangers if he does not fall in love with Christ as a woman might do! He will drive away the “natural” and it will come galloping back! This is how, neglecting this dimension of his relationship with Christ, he will make his affection fragile and expose it to any occasion! Sooner or later! And then, either he will compensate for it with intellectualism, or with an obsession with apostolic work that will become for him like a drug, an escape forward! Often, as a result of this “escape from his own affectivity,” the will to power emerges, with the harshness of his pastoral action (false masculinity), the harshness of a spirit that is inflexible because it is little in love.
How can a man become Christian if he has not allowed the development of the feminine dimension of receptivity and love, and has not let his eros grow? Can we entrust him with the deposit[24]? How to discern? Intelligence and action are not enough to make a priest! It is a grave mistake to deny that the whole man is a sexuated being, because in this way, we set aside some of the most powerful resources of the human being: his affectivity and his “eroticism.” This exposes him to many deviations, because his heart is not possessed, but remains free and exposed! This is how we can measure the real functioning of the Church! If we do not have healthy priests (men whose affectivity and whose hearts are developed and loved, considered and honoured by the love of Christ the Bridegroom), we will never have holy priests! This holiness will be false!
The woman (who, in fact, is a part of him himself) is often seen as a “diabolical” subject, one to be feared, avoided, ignored; a mystery that escapes[25], that is despised. In fact, it is enough to eliminate the objective woman outside, to understand that she is an unconscious projection and see the extent of the “danger” or inner blindness of the man!
Should we not say: “If you do not become like ‘women,’ you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”? “If you do not allow your eros to fall in love with Christ, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” We could still say in this way: “If you do not become ‘Good Soil,’ you will never bear fruit.” This reminds us of the key parable of the Sower (Mt 13, Mk 4, Lk 8). And the “Good Soil” is certainly Mary, who alone could bear Fruit. The best way to fall in love with Christ and follow Him is to reach the virginal eros of Mary and be reshaped in it.
12- The Eros in Love with Christ the Bridegroom
Do not separate the desire (eros) of God and the Love (agape) of God.
Do not neglect the desire (eros) of God.
Extraordinary strength lies in this attention given to eros.
Loving a person, that is, allowing our eros to be touched by the love of that person, is beautiful, thrilling, and we do it with the innermost part of ourselves in a completely visceral way. But love makes us vulnerable. Love leads to idealizing, to putting the other person on a pedestal. Loving-desiring-being passionate in the deepest part of our being, in fact, creates an idol, because it deifies the other person. And it is normal that disillusionment follows, because the other is nothing but a human being. A mistake is made in the choice of the person. As a result, we remain disappointed, wounded, and stop; we may give up on this desire, on making ourselves vulnerable again.
This power of love within us (eros) is then buried because we no longer want to expose ourselves in this way, opening ourselves up and becoming vulnerable, only to end up being hurt!
While the Pope rightly reminds us that Christ appeals to this capacity to love and shows us that, indeed, Jesus is the only one who can satisfy it.
The objection often raised is that Jesus is not at all appreciable to the touch, and that one needs a real being, one that can be seen and touched! However, God Himself became flesh and became a true man, and this objection falls because the passion He can evoke in us is authentic, and the feelings He generates in us are tangible. This is what St. John wanted to tell us in his own way: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life – for the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us – that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.” (1 Jn 1:1-3) Jesus, after 2000 years, is very tangible and more tangible than a man or a woman. The love, feelings, passions, and presence He gives us are authentic. He satisfies our capacity to love.
It is in this sense that we must understand Pope Benedict XVI’s warning not to neglect our eros or separate it from the agape of God. The risk is twofold: either putting our capacity to love aside, or separating it from our way of loving God, that is, loving Him only with our higher part.
The Pope transmits to us the good news that Jesus, with His loving gaze, lowers Himself to our level, not only sharing our desire to love but also prompting it, inviting it, attracting it, and seducing it. He makes us fall in love with Him! The Pope invites us not to fear our eros, our capacity to love, but to let the Gaze of Christ penetrate our eros, let the Love of Christ set our human heart on fire and wound it. Thus, discovering ourselves for the first time deeply loved by Christ, wounded by His love, we will go out in search of Him and we will be able to exclaim:
SONG OF THE SOUL AND THE BRIDEGROOM
I
THE BRIDE
Where have You hidden Yourself,
And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?
You have fled like the hart,
Having wounded me.
I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.
II
O shepherds, you who go
Through the sheepcots up the hill,
If you shall see Him
Whom I love the most,
Tell Him I languish, suffer, and die.
III
In search of my Love
I will go over mountains and strands;
I will gather no flowers,
I will fear no wild beasts;
And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.
IV
O groves and thickets
Planted by the hand of the Beloved;
O verdant meads
Enameled with flowers,
Tell me, has He passed by you?
V
ANSWER OF THE CREATURES
A thousand graces diffusing
He passed through the groves in haste,
And merely regarding them
As He passed
Clothed them with His beauty.
VI
THE BRIDE
Oh! who can heal me?
Give me at once Yourself,
Send me no more
A messenger
Who cannot tell me what I wish.
VII
All they who serve are telling me
Of Your unnumbered graces;
And all wound me more and more,
And something leaves me dying,
I know not what, of which they are darkly speaking.
VIII
But how you persevere, O life,
Not living where you live;
The arrows bring death
Which you receive
From your conceptions of the Beloved.
IX
Why, after wounding
This heart, have You not healed it?
And why, after stealing it,
Have You thus abandoned it,
And not carried away the stolen prey?
X
Quench my troubles,
For no one else can soothe them;
And let my eyes behold You,
For You are their light,
And I will keep them for You alone.
XI
Reveal Your presence,
And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,
Behold the malady
Of love is incurable
Except in Your presence and before Your face.
(St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle, stanzas 1…11)
In this poem, we see a man (John of the Cross) expressing himself by putting himself in the shoes of a woman who has been touched in her eros by Christ, who has gone out of herself to seek Him, to find Him. This poem, as well as its brief commentary, is a description of an eros that, touched and “wounded” by the pure Eros of Christ, sets off in search of Him, to find Him.
More than once, the Pope, as an authentic mystic, quotes both the Song of Songs and Christian Mystics. And rightly so, because it is they who have allowed their eros to fall in love with Christ and to live deeply – we could even say “to dwell within” – the sanctuary that is the Song of Songs!
The point raised by the Pope in the first part of his Encyclical is the heart of the Christian faith and vocation. This is the point where the young rich man of the Gospel stumbled: “He went away sad because he had many possessions.” Indeed, his eros, which Christ had sought (“He looked at him and loved him”), did not allow itself to be touched by the loving gaze of Christ. Because if he had opened his heart, his innermost being, his eros to Christ, he would have found the strength to “go out of himself.” Truly, the Gaze of Christ carries an extraordinary power of love capable of moving mountains! But the young man allowed his heart to remain locked, walled inside the citadel of his great possessions. But every human being, no matter how poor or old they may be, is indeed rich and young. It is this heart, capable of love, that allows each of us, even at 70 years old, to fall in love and experience love! Our eros remains intact! Only, we often hide it under many meters of sand! If our intellect also seeks happiness – as the young rich man did – saying, “What must I do to find happiness and live it?”, Christ’s answer is always the same: “Where is your eros? Where is your heart? Where is your capacity to love?”
Indeed, one cannot follow Christ only with the mind, only with agape! The Pope warns us against this very serious negligence. He knows what he is talking about, he who, during the final months of Pope John Paul II’s life, composed his last Stations of the Cross and pointed out, with extraordinary disillusionment, the consequences of this negligence[26]. We cannot follow Christ if we do so only through agape. Where is our eros? What have we done with our eros? This is the serious question the Pope asks us at the beginning of his Pontificate.
His Encyclical is filled with extraordinary freedom, novelty, and freshness. He does not linger on any dogmatic, moral, or liturgical points. By setting them aside (but without neglecting them in the slightest), he points to the fundamental issue that gives life to faith, ethics, and liturgy: where is your eros? Are you in love with Christ down to your very core? Or is your love intellectual, only touching the upper part of your being?
This Encyclical is filled with an extraordinary passion for Christ. A passion certainly contained, because it is expressed with the Pope’s own genius. But no less passionate and overflowing. Ah, if only we could understand this cry of love, this cry of passion that the Pope has for God, for Christ. Today, at the beginning of his Pontificate, the Pope unveils the secret of the Christian life, and there is no other: to fall in love with Christ with all our eros.
He brings us back to the origins of Christian life, to its original springing up, to the primal seduction that God has come to realize in our fleshly, human, and love-thirsty hearts: Christ Jesus of Nazareth.
13 – Becoming a Source
“God is Love” warns us against putting the cart before the horse. It is this relationship with Christ, the quality of this relationship, that is the source of charity in the Church, of its service, and not vice versa. The Pope gives us, with a simple, profound, and Johannine intuition, the secret of specifically Christian fruitfulness: it is not at all about action, action, action. No, it is the fact of drinking every day from the open heart of Christ that will transform us into fountains ourselves, into sources of love for others, because this Water of love that Christ gives us transforms into us – as Christ says in the Gospel of St. John – into a spring of love. “On the other hand, man cannot live exclusively in a descending, self-sacrificial love. He cannot always just give; he must also receive. Who wants to give love must himself receive it as a gift. Of course, man can – as the Lord tells us – become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). But to become such a source, he himself must always drink from that first, original source that is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).” (DCE 7)
The Pope here also shows us where the source of Service in the Church is found. Have you been touched by Christ? Are you in love with Christ? The Pope wants to say between the lines: but it is evident that you are in love, it is written on your face that you are inhabited by Christ, that He lives in you: you have become, in turn, a Source of Love for others.
This is the Sign of union with God.
But to reach union with God, our eros has a whole journey to make, a journey of coming out of oneself, of purification. The Pope points this out repeatedly. Many risk reading the Encyclical in a moralizing way: my eros, my way of loving my neighbor, must be purified, my carnal attachment to my wife or husband, etc… must be purified! The Pope goes much further. It is the act of falling in love with Christ that purifies our eros by centering it on Christ, and in this way begins a journey that leads eros to a transformation – described by the mystics and the Song of Songs – a transformation necessary to become truly an authentic source that gushes forth Love.
The Encyclical “God is Love” raises our gaze to a much broader horizon than moral issues and touches on the fundamental questions: our eros in itself before Christ In love with us! It is the passionately powerful encounter between the two that is the source of the possible progress of our Christian journey and our purification. This encounter is the main driving force of our transformation. The Pope begins with the Love of God, because it is He who has called us first. The driving force of my advancement is, therefore, the gaze fixed on this Passion of Love that Christ has for me.
14- God is Eros
In his Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI refers to a passage in note 7: “The Pseudo- Dionysius the Areopagite, in his book The Divine Names, calls God simultaneously eros and agape,” citing paragraphs 12-14 of this work. This text, written by the mysterious figure commonly known as the “Pseudo-Dionysius,” has captivated Christian thought for centuries. Though we distinguish this author from the historical Dionysius who listened to Paul in Athens[27], this work became a foundational source of Christian doctrine and authority, second only to the Scriptures[28]. The Pope cites it precisely because of the depth and daring nature of its theology, which seeks to speak of God in radically new terms.
Below are excerpts[29] from paragraphs 11 to 17, where Dionysius addresses the concept of God as a “desiring-love,” or “eros.”
The Pseudo-Dionysius is fully aware of the audacity of using such a term for God. He knows that many may misunderstand the term, and so he distinguishes between two categories of people: those who seek to understand divine things through a path of transformation, and those who, upon hearing the word “eros” attributed to God, only perceive “bare sounds” and fail to grasp its profound meaning. To counter this, Dionysius refers to two biblical passages that evoke the idea of God as desiring-love: “Love her and she will watch over you; prize her and she will exalt you; she will place a garland of grace upon your head; she will present you with a crown of beauty” (Prov 4:6-9), and “I fell in love with her beauty” (Wisdom 8:2). He believes there are many other biblical texts where God is celebrated in erotic terms, calling for an openness to the “erotic” aspects of Scripture, especially in books like Wisdom, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. These books, Dionysius argues, prepare us to understand deeper spiritual truths, following an ancient pedagogical tradition. To validate what he says about God being considered as “eros,” he will also cite a passage from Saint Ignatius of Antioch: “It is the object of my loving desire that they have crucified.”[30]
Why choose such an explicit and raw term to describe God? Dionysius responds by explaining: “When the intellect, with the help of sensible things, tries to ascend toward the vision of spiritual things, more precious are the more manifest transports of the senses, the clearer discourses, and the more apparent visions. For, when unclear objects are presented to the senses, the senses cannot present them suitably to the intellect” (§11). Therefore, Dionysius urges not to fear the erotic vocabulary, and to embrace any discourse that may create doubt about its meaning (§12).
For Dionysius, the terms “desirous-love” (eros) and “love-charity” (agape) are synonymous. “Some of our sacred authors have believed that the name ‘desirous-love’ (eros) is more divine than that of ‘love-charity’ (agape)” (§12). But what kind of love is being referred to? Dionysius is fully aware of the risks of misinterpretation: “But if they are more willing to attribute true love to divine things, it is due to the strange prejudice of such individuals” (§12) who cling to words rather than to things. In fact, “although true love is celebrated in a manner worthy of God, not only by us but also by the Scriptures themselves, the common people do not understand that in God the desirous-love (eros) takes the form of unity, and, in accordance with their ignorance, they lean towards this kind of partial, bodily, divided desire that is more familiar to them” (§12). This is what the Pope will say in his own way, showing that human eros is capable of being purified and transformed, so as to perceive God in a different way. “In this case, it is not true love, but an image, or rather the loss, of true love. In fact, the common people cannot understand the sense of the unity of divine love as one. Therefore, since this name seems rather troublesome to most, it is placed in divine Wisdom to lift and lead the common people to the knowledge of true love and to free them from the difficulty inherent in the name” (§12).
“On the other hand, in reference to us, when it would be possible that the common people think something inappropriate, using a more decent name, it says: ‘His favour (love-charity) fell upon me, as the favour of women does’ (2 Kings 1:26). For those who understand divine things with a right mind, the sacred authors use the name of favour (love-charity, agape) and of love-desire (eros) with the same meaning, according to divine interpretations.” (§12)
Dionysius gives us the deep reason why the two terms eros and agape have the same value and validity to designate God. In fact, both express “what is proper to a uniting and encompassing power that excellently joins and belongs eternally to God” (§12). Now, eros and agape are forces that unite two beings who love each other, bring them together, and keep them in union. This is precisely the nature of God.
Dionysius does not settle for explaining these aspects, but takes another step forward when he says that love in God, eros, is ecstatic, meaning that His Nature drives Him to go beyond Himself, giving Himself totally to humanity – while remaining completely within Himself. “Divine Love is also ecstatic […] the author of all these things, for the good and beautiful love of all His works, in the excess of His Loving Goodness goes out of Himself, to provide for all beings, and is, so to speak, enticed by Goodness, Charity, and His Desire” (§13). Dionysius gives us a series of highly evocative expressions: “all His works,” “goes out of Himself,” “enticed… by His Desire.” Powerful words that reveal to us the very nature of God. The Pope will express these ideas in his own way: God is “a lover with all the passion of true love” (DCE 12). And does not the lover go in search of the beloved? “The Prophets, Hosea and Ezekiel, especially, described this passion of God for His people with bold erotic imagery,” the Pope continues. “When Jesus, in His parables, speaks of the shepherd who goes to find the lost sheep, the woman who seeks the coin, the father who goes to meet the prodigal son and embraces him, these are not merely words, but constitute the explanation of His very being and action” (DCE 12). Dionysius continues: “From a secluded place, above all and detached from everything, He allows Himself to be led to what is in all things, by this ecstatic, supersubstantial power, which cannot be separated from Him. Therefore, those who are experts in divine matters call Him jealous, since He is rich in good love for beings […], He Himself is shown as jealous, and even the things He desires are for Him objects of jealousy, since even the things He provides for are for Him objects of jealousy […]” (Divine Names, §13).
But this jealous ardour does not merely pursue the human being; it is capable of opening the human heart, of speaking deeply to the eros of man, and inflaming it with the very Love of God, the Holy Spirit: “it excites to jealousy a desire of love towards Him” (§13). “It is a force that moves and attracts together towards itself” (§14).
15 – “Here comes the dreamer” (Gen 37:19)
When we pause to reflect on the Pope’s approach starting from § 9, the “novelty of biblical faith,” where he aims to revisit the image we have of God and of man, we might react like Jacob’s sons who see their brother coming from a distance: “Here comes the dreamer.” “The image that one forms of,” here, precisely a dream, some would say: a very abstract dream. However, theologian Ratzinger surprises us with his contemplative capacity, with his intellectual approach that reaches the heart of the problem: the way in which we look at God. His liberating and free approach must be emphasized and kept in mind. How many times throughout the Encyclical does he tell us: it’s not a matter of Dogma, Morality, or Liturgy, but of their profound inner unity.
“The passage He makes from the Law and the Prophets to the double commandment of love towards God and towards the neighbor, the derivation of all faith existence from the centrality of this precept, is not simple morality that can then exist autonomously alongside faith in Christ and its reactivation in the Sacrament: faith, worship, and ethos permeate each other as one reality that is configured in the encounter with God’s Agape” (DCE 14).
Those who seek their own salvation by considering Dogma, or Rite, or Morality separately are destined to fail. The Pope seems to tell us in between the lines: the key to accessing these three areas is the contemplative gaze, it is the spiritual life that transforms the human being, it is transformed eros, because it is in love with Christ. It is eros that has not only tasted the Love of the Bridegroom but has followed Him and has become a desire for God, a desire ever-growing until it reaches union with this God.
Let us notice the very structure of our faith, as presented through the ordinary teaching of the Church, the Catechism. We have 3 + 1 parts in the Catechism: 1 – the Creed (Dogma, Faith), 2 – the Celebration (Rite), 3 – Morality. But we also have the final part: Spiritual Life (Prayer). The three pillars of Christian life (the first three parts) remain lifeless and flattened if Spiritual Life, which gives them life and unity, does not elevate these three columns, so that they converge, unite, and merge into one point: union with Christ.
““Great is the Mystery of faith.” The Church professes it in the Apostles’ Creed (first part) and celebrates it in the sacramental Liturgy (second part), so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (third part). This Mystery therefore requires the faithful to believe it, to celebrate it, and to live it in a living and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.” (CCC 2558)
The Encyclical contains more that is implicit than explicit. In it, the Pope seems to remind us that in the Lord’s Vineyard, there is always a Tower (Spiritual Life), and that without this Tower, the Vineyard cannot be guarded. “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, and put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower” (Mt 21:33). The Tower does not only represent the contemplative ability but the entire spiritual and mystical dimension, to be built and drawn from. What must be emphasized is the fact that the Pope, in his first Encyclical, shows us the way. Have we perhaps entered a new era? In fact, the man who wants to renew Europe and has chosen the name Benedict shows us the way. For those who expected an intellectual or inquisitorial Ratzinger, here he surprises us all by unveiling his heart, his deepest desires, his heart that beats. We find ourselves facing a contemplative, a mystic, who is not afraid to show himself in this way. He has absolutely no fear that people might say of him: “Here comes the man of dreams” (Gn 37:19). In his way, he tells us: do not be afraid of the contemplative dimension, do not be afraid of this overwhelming power that contains in itself the eros that follows Christ. Let the man of desire, the man who makes his heart vulnerable to Christ, who allows himself to fall in love with Him and follow Him, unfold deep within you. This is Ratzinger’s “Do not be afraid.”
“Here comes the dreamer,” here is the contemplative, here is the man who outlines the way for the new geopolitics whose heart is Europe: contemplation is the source of the greatest achievements, mystics are the most fertile people, and the achievements of spiritual men and women are the most lasting.
16 – The Great Question is Open
The profound mystical light of this Encyclical points towards the “theology of the deep” or “Mystical Science” or “Spiritual Theology.” And this raises the real question of the future of the Church. How can we reach the contemplative and mystical dimension the Pope speaks of if we do not know how to do it? Is there not a “Doctrinal Body” for this? The fourth part of the Catechism that we discussed earlier, is it not a beginning of an answer? All well-meaning readers of the Encyclical will touch with their hands its beauty and its elevation, the deep and powerful passion that inhabits it. But between having a vague intuition of the deep beauty of the Christian life and experiencing it directly, the distance is great.
The task is indeed great, beautiful, and noble. To expose the mystical Doctrine of the Church, to bring out from under the sand 2000 years of unheard-of spiritual wealth is no small task. Proposing a realistic and effective spiritual teaching that leads to Union with Christ, this is the greatest challenge we all must face. To expose the mystical Doctrine of the Church in a “common” way, so that it becomes the solid, rich, and ordinary nourishment for the people of God, is a goal of a high level. In fact, beyond the different schools of spirituality, we must find a common foundation, the minimum common deep unity of the mystical Tradition. The absence of this work – of this ecclesial effort – explains the great weakness of the fourth part of the Catechism, when compared to the first three sections, which present a solidity that is almost intimidating.
To identify a common foundation for Spiritual Doctrine, to rediscover the deep and common unity of mystical tradition, we can begin, usefully, by helping the people of God digest the Real nourishment offered to them every day in the Mass from the Table of the Word and from the Table of the Body and Blood of this Word. There is only one royal way that we can undertake, that of opening the path to the experience of God. And what better ways, to digest the royal nourishment of the Mass, than Lectio Divina and Prayer of the heart? Both are the extensions of each of the two Tables of the Mass. They flow directly from the double River of the Mass. Lectio Divina (listening to the Word) is the extension of the eating of the Word, and the Prayer of the heart (or Contemplative Prayer) is in turn the extension of the Communion to the Body and Blood of Christ.
17 – Conclusion
The Pope’s first Encyclical contains far more riches than those we have highlighted. We do not claim to provide a comprehensive commentary, far from it – that would involve undertaking the writing of a summa of spiritual theology. Our aim was simple and, in some respects, limited. As specialists in mystical theology, we wanted to highlight the extraordinary richness of the Encyclical from our point of view. We have proposed an interpretation of some of the Pope’s passages, but above all, the interpretation of his approach, his choice of subjects, and their meaning in the light of the living and mystical Tradition of the Church. In this way, the deep and rich mine represented by this Encyclical will better reveal itself and nourish us.
We give thanks to God for this “German boldness,” this sincerity, and this heart-to-heart dialogue that the Pope has chosen to embark upon with us through this letter. Let him be thanked from the bottom of our hearts.
JK London, March 2006
Text of the Encyclical Letter here.
[1] See Song of Songs 8:2: ‘I would lead you, I would bring you into the house of my mother.’ An allusion to Our Lady.
[2] See also: ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass before you and will proclaim my name, YHWH, before you: I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy’ (Exodus 33:19), where the meaning of YHWH is clearly expressed: to show grace, to have mercy.
[3] In Hebrew, ‘rahum’ means merciful. The root of this term comes from ‘womb’.
[4] André Chouraqui, in his French translation of the Bible, chose to translate the word ‘mercy’ from Hebrew as ‘matriciant,’ which means ‘introducing into the womb.’ In fact, in Hebrew, the root of the word for mercy refers to the female womb (matrix).
[5] “Since YHWH your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24).
[6] “We find this attitude also without leaving the ‘Living Flame’ (Living Flame B): ‘Try … to detach it from all desires directed towards consolations, sweetnesses, tastes, and spiritual meditations. Do not disturb it with worries or concerns of any kind regarding spiritual matters’ (Living FlameB III,38).”
[7] Although these words refer to the praises of creatures, they can also be extended to the case of inner graces: ‘All creatures can bow before it, admire it, and shower it with praise. I don’t know why, but all this could not add a single drop of false joy to the true joy that it tastes in its heart, … […] Now there is no more danger, on the contrary […]’ (Ms.C 2r°).
[8] “For a year and a half, Jesus has wanted to change the way He makes His little flower grow, […] now […] Jesus wants only His smile for it […] This sweet sun […] makes it grow wonderfully…” (Ms C 1v°).
[9] “La cura que hace el amor es llagar y herir sobre lo llagado” (Living Flame B II,7). “We translate ‘llagar’ as ‘to make a wound’ and ‘herir’ as ‘to wound’.”
[10] Still the verb: “Regalar”.
[11] F. Ruiz Salvador, Introducción a San Juan de la Cruz. El hombre, los escritos, el sistema, B.A.C. 279, Madrid, 1968, p. 262, note 16.
[12] “To love one’s wife is to love oneself. No one ever hated their own flesh; on the contrary, they nourish and care for it, as Christ does with the Church, for we are members of His body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery; I speak concerning Christ and the Church! So also, let each one of you in particular love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband!” (Eph 5:28-33)
[13] It is implied that genitality is not excluded from the spiritual journey. To understand its place in spiritual life, let’s first consider it in the case of human love. In most people, if the heart is taken by a strong passion of love, genitality tends to follow the heart that loves. Therefore, it does not function as an end in itself, but is transformed and elevated by the love that binds the two people. The primacy is thus given to the relationship of love and not to the mere pursuit of pleasure. With the maturation of this love, genital energy is not only used physically but nourishes the daily actions of the couple. In that case, eros and genitality, together, become capable of forms of self-giving that do not necessarily involve physicality. This shows the “shaping” primacy of the passion that inhabits eros over genitality. Returning to our topic, we can say that the same path we have just seen, which leads genitality to this transformation, is lived in the passionate love with Christ. We must add that without this “passionate love with Christ,” genitality, left without help, either gets repressed (and thus deviates toward power or possession), or becomes an end in itself. To conclude this note, we can say that the genitality of a human being with a heart taken by a passionate love has more chances of being elevated and nourishing this passion with its energy.
[14] It is important to repeat that this path of total self-giving to Christ is offered to all, regardless of sex or state of life, whether chosen or endured. Within each person’s situation, it is important to realize that, in the face of other loves, we remain free to place or not place Jesus in the first position, repeatedly.
[15] We can use the adjective “feminine” even in reference to Saint Paul! He is often considered the most “masculine” of authors, but at times, he displays a tenderness that is truly feminine: he rightly says that he gives birth to his children in pain, like a woman! Like a mother! He possesses a capacity to penetrate the mystery of Christ that can only depend on the development of his feminine side!
[16] The choice of God, by becoming incarnate, to take the human nature of a male.
[17] This is contrary to the constant teaching of the Church Fathers and the Christian Faith: “God, by becoming incarnate, assumed everything in us,” and “that which was not assumed by Him is not saved.” Therefore, Christ assumed everything in us, and He is capable of “speaking” to all of our being (including our eros), healing it, seducing it, transforming it, and elevating it.
[18] And not “asexual” as some would try to make the priest by referring to the eunuchs spoken of by the Lord in Matthew 19:10-12: “The disciples said to Him, ‘If this is the condition of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.’ He answered, ‘Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who can accept this accept it.'” The Church has always strongly opposed physical castration. But one cannot castrate someone psychically or erotically either. The Pope, aware of this, wants to offer a way of living for eros.
[19] Unfortunately, women benefit little from this!
[20] It is clear that there is no mention of genitality at all.
[21] He will become effeminate: in the sense that he will change sex (transsexual), or sexual tendency (he will become homosexual)!
[22] That is, it has its origin.
[23]His own feminine part!
[24]It is about the deposit of the faith and the mission entrusted by Christ to the apostle, for example: ‘For I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day’ (2 Timothy 1:12). ‘Guard the good deposit with the help of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us’ (2 Timothy 1:14). ‘This faith which we have received from the Church, we preserve with care, because, under the action of the Spirit of God, it, like a deposit of great value, locked in a precious vessel, continually renews itself and makes the vessel that contains it renew as well’ (CCC 175).
[25] There is also a fear that when the woman reveals herself in us, we may no longer be able to ‘control’ this reality! We fear being overwhelmed by it!
[26] “How many times do we celebrate only ourselves without even realizing Him! How many times is His Word distorted and abused! How little faith there is in so many theories, how many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong completely to Him! How much pride, how much self-sufficiency! How little we respect the sacrament of reconciliation, in which He waits for us, to lift us up from our falls! All of this is present in His passion. The betrayal of the disciples, the unworthy reception of His Body and Blood is certainly the greatest pain of the Redeemer, the one that pierces His heart. All that remains is to cry out to Him, from the deepest of our soul, the cry: Kyrie, eleison – Lord, save us (cf. Mt 8:25).” (Card. Ratzinger, Via Crucis 2005, 9th station).
[27]“When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them mocked him, while others said, ‘We will hear you again on this.’ So Paul left their meeting. But some joined him and became believers, including Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus.” (Acts 17:32-34).
[28] In the West, St. Thomas Aquinas considers Pseudo-Dionysius to be greater than St. Augustine!
[29] Dionysius the Areopagite, “All the Works,” translated by P. Scazzoso, Rusconi Libri, 1997.
[30] Ignatius of Antiochia, Ep. Ad Rom. 7.