Lectio
“But as after the breaking of a violent storm there comes a calm, so when tears have burst forth, there is peace, and gloomy thoughts vanish; and as by water and the Spirit, so by tears and confession we are again made clean.”
— St. John Chrysostom, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea
Meditatio
Christ asks us to become a calming force amidst the turmoil of the world, to be peacemakers among the warmongers and harbingers of division and destruction, and to be meek and humble in a culture where it is customary to be brazen, boastful, and spiteful. All of this to say, Christ asks us to love. He asks us to love as He loves, which is to give our whole selves over to love, our lives over to God and to our neighbors, and to become a beacon of hope and a haven of safety for all who have none.
But we will fall short, and He has always known it. No matter how hard we strive and even pray to become as Christ was in this world, we will stumble and we will fail in more ways than we can even comprehend, for even when our actions appear right and just, our hearts betray us and our minds wander from the Lord. Our desires will give way to greed, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Our intentions will be skewed by envy, anger, and pride. And our faith will be tainted by fear and self-interest.
As such, where we intend to remain calm, we will all too often find ourselves excited. When we attempt to bring or manufacture peace in a given situation or relationship, we will find ourselves getting in the way and causing friction. And where we are meant to love, to show mercy, and to offer forgiveness — always, and to everyone — we will often discover that we have, in fact, attempted to hold something back, to keep it for ourselves, and to be the arbiter of justice in our own minds and in our own flawed way.
The Spirit of the Lord in our hearts has never stopped drawing us back, however. Through our conscience, God is always speaking to us, whispering to us what He wills and gently pulling us back into His grace, His mercy, and His love so that we may live there with Him and invite others into His kingdom through our presence. And when His Spirit draws us and our will resists, it can feel as though something inside us is being pulled in two — our hearts torn apart by the very love that calls us to itself.
This tearing is not punishment. Nor is it meant to injure us. Rather, it is what we feel of the distance between ourselves and Love Himself. In this distance created by self, we feel the pull to something more, something better, and something holy, but it terrifies us. As this love loosens our grasp on our desires and our self-imposed captivity, we are given to glimpse how far away we have gone from the Lord once again, and we begin to weep.
With tears of contrition and lips of confession, we give ourselves over to the love that never left us, and we discover, once again, that the calm amidst the turmoil of the world was never ours to create. We begin to see that we are not the source of the peace we are asked to have in the face of warmongers and harbingers of division and destruction. We are shown that our meekness and humility inside of a culture of brazenness, boastfulness, and spitefulness was never our own achievement, but His meekness and humility at work in us. The same Love that met us in the waters of Baptism meets us again in our tears.
As we confess our sin once more, Christ teaches us again that He alone is the source of the love He asks us to have — that we cannot have love without Him, that we can neither create nor sustain calm, peace, meekness, or humility without Him. He teaches us that it is only through Him that the things He asks of us are possible, because He is the love He asks us to bear.
We are Christ’s Body in the world, and He is the love that moves in us. And so it is through our errors, through our failings, and through our shortcomings that we are drawn again into the mercy that never withdrew, and invited to extend this same mercy out into the world in His name and through His love. Though the storms outside us may persist, the calm of Christ unfolds in our hearts in their midst.
Oratio
Washing Away My Sins
saltwater tears
wash away my sins
like the river
that carried me
to You
who knew my heart
before I let You in
abiding within
waiting for me
to see
Your grace
softening my pride
allaying my fears
opening my eyes
to love
God above all
neighbor as myself
there is nowhere
I would rather
be
Contemplatio
Your tears were never payment. They are love making its way to the surface of you, and He has been waiting there the whole time. Be still, with nothing to explain and nothing to fix, and let Him move as He wills.
Related Scripture
“You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?”
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like The Door We Close Ourselves: Fr. Mike Schmitz and the Love That Never Leaves (Lectio Divina), which stays with the love that never leaves us and asks what it means to be free to receive it or refuse it.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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