Lectio
“My earthly desire has been crucified… there is living water in me, water that murmurs and says within me: Come to the Father.”
— St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Romans
Meditatio
Once God calls us to Himself, He does not stop calling. His love is persistent. His will is undeterred by our tendency towards distraction.
And once we have tasted His living water, nothing else will quench our thirst. Though we may attempt to find satisfaction outside of Him, we cannot, because our longing and its fulfillment are from the same source: God’s presence within us longing for God.
He is both our heart’s sickness and its cure. He is the wound of our soul and its healing balm. He is the death of the false self we fear with our entire being and the loving hand that consoles us and draws us to new life with Him beyond the grave.
Through baptism, alongside Christ, we are crucified, dead, and buried to the flesh and all of its false promises so that, in Him and with Him, we may be raised up, given new life, new desires, and new purpose. In and with Christ, we are reborn in the Spirit, and the Spirit that lives within us will not be satisfied by anything less than God Himself. And so it murmurs from within us, crying out for the very God from whom it proceeds, persistent and undeterred because the Spirit knows nothing of our earthly desires, but only its own heavenly longing for us to return to God.
Oratio
Through You
I hear You calling
from the depths
crying out for union
desiring that my brokenness
be healed
through You
wishing
willing
wanting
that I should receive You
that I should run to You
that I should die with You
do You hear me calling
from the depths
crying out for union
desiring that my brokenness
be healed
through You
wishing
willing
wanting
that I should receive You
that I should run to You
that I should die with You
only made possible
through You
Contemplatio
Somewhere beneath the noise of what you want, something in you is already asking to come home. You don’t have to arrive there by your own strength — the water is already murmuring, already calling you back. Stay a moment in that murmur, and consent to let it carry you.
Related Scripture
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Becoming Love’s Flame: On Surrender and the Living Flame of Love (Lectio Divina), which turns to John of the Cross’s own vision of a soul already aflame with a love it cannot earn.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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