Lectio
“Touch my heart with this grace, O Lord. When I reach out in joy or in sorrow for the things of this world, grant that through them I may know and love You, their Maker and final home. You who are Love itself, give me the grace of love, give me Yourself, so that all my days may finally empty into the one day of Your eternal Life.”
— Fr. Karl Rahner, SJ, Encounters with Silence
Meditatio
Love makes us emotionally porous — permeable to another’s suffering when they are hurt or sick, and vulnerable to our own suffering at the prospect of their absence, their changing in a way that we may not recognize, or the reality of their loss. But it also gives meaning to a life that can otherwise feel dark, lonely, and unbearable, and makes the journey through this world easier and more navigable. The very thing that makes love beautiful — its rarity and fragility — is what makes it costly, but also why, at its best, it gives us such a profound sense of clarity, belonging, and purpose. And yet, in love, there are also moments of extreme frustration, confusion, and suffering, because to love someone is to be open to the full range of emotions that come with the potential for that love to be rejected, abandoned, or unreciprocated. It is all of this together — the grief, the frustration, the longing, the rejection — that makes love so rarely what we imagined it would or should be.
If this is true of us — with our finite, conditional, and fickle love — how much more must it have been true of Jesus, who loved fully and without reservation, and whose only offering was love itself because Jesus is love itself. If even our partial, guarded love costs us this much, how lonely, frustrated, and confused he must have felt, giving everything and finding it so often refused. And if our imperfect love can wound us this deeply, what must it have been like for Jesus, whose love was perfect and whose capacity to feel was without limit — who wept at a friend’s tomb, sweat blood in the garden, and cried out in forsakenness from the cross — not despite his love, but because of it, and at a cost that our imperfect love is simply incapable of matching. For those of us who, in our finite capacity for love, have experienced real, heartbreaking betrayal or loss, we still only know a fraction of what Jesus felt in his infinite heart.
As Jesus shows his disciples after the resurrection, the openings love makes within us are not wounds to be closed but apertures to be widened. The hardness we build around them — our self-protective armor against further hurt — will soften through grace, slowly, until we become what Jesus already is: perfectly, luminously transparent to love. This is the work of a lifetime, and more than a lifetime. The cracks are how the light gets in, and how the love pours out.
And yet he calls us to the cross with him. He beckons us to himself — to ascend with him in self-sacrificial love and to give all of ourselves to God and one another. And while we cannot comprehend what this fully means, he also gives us the strength and the courage to walk up that hill anyway. But it means letting go of our hopes, fears, and expectations around what we think love should be, and to instead embody love with arms outstretched, empty hands, and an open heart. He calls us to join him, not because suffering in love is our end, but because it is only the beginning — it is the threshold we must cross if we are to sit by his side in eternity, where every tear will be wiped away, where death and mourning and pain will mercifully cease, and love will finally look the way we always hoped it would because our hope, we may find, is a seed of heaven planted in us by he who is the very love for which we long.
Oratio
soften my heart
O Lord
shine your love
into me
shatter the hardness
that surrounds me
my false protection
all I want to be
break down my walls
O Lord
make your kingdom
in my soul
make me a vessel
of your peace
a refuge
where others may be made whole
Contemplatio
Sit with the image of Jesus showing his wounds to Thomas. What wounds are you carrying that love has made in you? Can you hold them, even briefly, as apertures rather than injuries?
Related Scripture
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” — 1 John 4:7 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Peace Be With You, Wounds and All, which explores how the risen Christ returns to his disciples bearing both wounds and Shalom — and how we are called to walk into the world wounded and glorified, offering that same peace to those who gave us our wounds.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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