Lectio
“We are called upon to live Christ’s life. We are called into the desert to meet the demon within. We are called to face God alone in the night of our own solitude. We are called to die with Jesus, in order to live with him. We are asked to lose all, to be emptied out, in order to be filled with the very fullness of God.”
— James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere
Meditatio
Love is an invitation to give more of ourselves to another than we want to give. It asks us to forget about our self-centered fears and our selfish desires, and to focus our attention outward, toward someone else, putting their well-being ahead of our comfort and our aspirations.
As St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “amare est velle bonum alicui — to love is to will the good of another.” There is no self-interest in love. It is an outward expression of an inner posture, not merely a feeling but an other-directed will to good. And while we must have self-love in order to love another, for as Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” not instead of yourself, this second part of the great command does not tell us to love ourselves instead of another, to will our own good over the good of another. What is good for us is, in fact, to will the good of another because, in doing so, we are loving as God loves, which is to pour ourselves out for the sake of the beloved, not merely to hold a certain kind of feeling in our hearts.
In this way, love is an act of sacrifice, of giving up what we want for ourselves for the sake of relationship. Like Jesus on the cross, giving His life for our sake and in obedience to the will of the Father, love is an invitation to bear our own cross for another, for to do this is to serve the will of God and, in fact, to become like Christ Himself — to love as Christ loved us.
This type of love, it must be said, does not require something from the beloved, for true love is freely given — neither imposed nor bartered for nor easily withdrawn on a whim or out of spite — and asks for nothing in return because true love was never ours to give, but comes from the Lord, so we have no claim on the conditions under which it flows out from us, only the freedom to let it pass through unhindered, or to close ourselves against it. For as Christ loved us and gave His life to us while we were yet undeserving and unwanting of this perfect love, we are invited to share in this same love by loving others in the same way, on our own cross, and even unto death.
Love asks more from us than we thought possible. God asks more from us than we can possibly give on our own. And so we require His assistance, His strength, His grace, and His mercy so that we may become more like Him — more like Love — by giving our lives away for the good of another with no thought of selfish want or gain. To do this is to participate in God’s very life, but to refuse this is to keep our own life, and to keep our life, Christ tells us, is to lose it.
Oratio
Poured Out
poured out
in blood
and tears
Your love
Your life
Your death
for me
not that I
might hold love tight
but that I
might give it
all away
Contemplatio
You have been poured into — now you are asked to be poured out. There is no other way to carry what you have received. Stay in the quiet with this, saying yes to whatever He wants to stir in you.
Related Scripture
“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Immeasurable Love: Bernard of Clairvaux and Why God Asks for Your Whole Heart (Lectio Divina), which sits with the same refusal to turn love into a transaction — insisting that what God asks of us was never a repayment, only a sharing in what has already been freely given.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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