This human longing to love God, to possess God, if you will, as one's beloved, is found in many expressions throughout Holy Scripture. One could think of the author of the Book of Wisdom when he writes, "I loved her [Lady Wisdom: a feminine image of God] and sought her from my youth; I desired to take her for my bride, and became enamored of her beauty." (Wisdom 8:2); or think of the many images from the Psalms, such as: "O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). or "What else have I in heaven but you [God]? Apart from you I want nothing on earth. My body and my heart faint for joy; God is my possession for ever" (Psalm 73:25-26). Yeshua ben Sira put it bluntly, "With all your might love your Maker..." (Sirach 7:30a)
Perhaps no other book captures the human longing and love for God as poetically as the Song of Songs where the Shulamite woman writes of her beloved:
"My beloved is all radiant and ruddy,
distinguished among ten thousand.
His head is the finest gold;
his locks are wavy,
black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves
beside the springs of water,
bathed in milk,
fitly set.
His cheeks are like beds of spices,
yielding fragrance.
His lips are lilies,
distilling liquid myrrh.
His arms are rounded gold,
set with jewels.
His body is ivory work,
encrusted with sapphires.
His legs are alabaster columns,
set upon bases of gold.
His appearance is like Lebanon,
choice as the cedars.
His speech is most sweet,
and he is altogether lovable.
This is my beloved and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem." (5:10-16)
Here her love for the man, captured in her very detailed account of the beauty of his body, is a metaphor for the human spirit's appreciation for God's perfection and loveliness. Once a glimpse of God's loveliness is had, a passionate desire is enkindled in the human soul which cannot be satisfied by anything less than the sweetness of God's company. This is no tame or platonic love--but an intense, consuming love. It is this type of love which motivates a man or woman to follow in the way of Yeshua the Messiah and live a life completely oriented on God. Historically in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, this following of the Messiah's example has taken many forms, including the secluded way of life of the desert fathers and mothers, the cloistered way of life of monks and nuns, the active way of life of religious brothers, religious sisters, priests, and missionaries of all sorts.
Let me remind you, Paul is not talking about marriage. Continue....
In truly Catholic form, one's profession of vows (for example, vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) plays out concretely in the context of the Church community, and most especially, in the context of one's religious community of brothers or sisters. Vows are not abstract, theoretical "nice ideas", therefore, they are part of a greater blueprint of the life of Grace--the wood and nails, if you will, of the bridge that guides a person from his or her former life of sin to the Kingdom of God.
Another way I have said this is found in my description of the Dominican Cooperator Brother vocation: "Cooperator brothers are men whose love for God and desire to serve the Church has led them to seek to live as vowed religious. They are freed by the vow of poverty to give what they have to others; freed by the vow of obedience to do what the Church, through the Order, asks of them; and freed by the vow of chastity to love all those they encounter. With the support of their community of fellow Dominicans, they go about their prayer, study, and ministry with joyful hearts. And though they are not priests, their lives are rooted in the sacramental life of the Church."
The vows ultimately are aimed at liberation, not restriction--thus, in a way, one's profession of vows is the reversal of the Fall from Grace, since such an action is a freely-chosen submission to the Will of God out of love. As the Messiah put it: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25; Luke 9:23-24). This "freedom/happiness-through-self-denial/self-giving" is Christian wisdom, often rejected by the modern world which believes freedom only comes from the power to determine everything for one's self.
What is the result of this kind of self-giving? In a word: Holiness--that is, a sharing in the very life and holiness of the Holy One [Hakodosh]through the mystical communion made possible through the Messiah and the work of the Ruah Hakodesh (Holy Spirit). St. Paul explains this when he writes, "For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:19-20).
St. Augustine is another example of a person made free by the love of and for God. Famously he wrote:
"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."
We can only understand the conversions of St. Paul and St. Augustine and their subsequent religious fervor in light of the great Revelation that Christianity proclaims about the nature of God--his own extraordinary self-sacrificing/self-giving love.
Blessed Julian of Norwich, whom (if she were a Doctor of the Church) one might call the Doctor of Divine Mercy, understood this self-sacrificing aspect of God through Christ not to be of one moment in time [the Crucifixion], but an on-going reality of God's loving desire for us. She wrote:
"For his [the Messiah's] love is so great that everything seems a trifle to him in comparison. For although the dear humanity of Christ could only suffer once, his goodness makes him always ready to do so again; he would do it every day if it were possible; and if he said that for love of me he would make new heavens and a new earth, it would be but little in comparison, for he could do this every day if he so wished, without any hardship; but to offer to die for love of me so often that the number of times passes human comprehension, that is the most glorious present that our Lord God could make to man's soul, it seems to me." (Revelation of Divine Love, chapter 22).
It is, therefore, because God has already pledged his love to us [through the saving Cross of Yeshua the Messiah], that we who profess vows to him do so with happy and joyful hearts, hoping to, in our very little and human way, reciprocate that awesome love shown to us.
--This, I believe, is the meaning of the profession of religious vows, of consecrated life, and of Christian living.
Isn't Brother Paul Byrd, O.P. a beautiful writer? Isn't his vocation beautiful? Make sure he's on your prayer list. I pray that he's generously blessed.
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