“…Our heart is restless until it rests in You.” (Saint Augustine).
The famous poet, prose writer, artist and sculptor, Khalil Gibran, wrote about love. And in describing love, Gibran said, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness... And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
And I have been reflecting on that interpretation of love, because it differs so dramatically from the love that Saint Catherine of Sienna wrote about when wrote of God… “To join two things together there must be nothing between them or there cannot be a perfect fusion. Now realize that this is how God wants our soul to be, without any selfish love of ourselves or of others in between, just as God loves us without anything in between.”
You see, when I pray for the Grace to surrender to God’s Holy Will, what I am really praying for is a stronger connection to God. That means that when I pray for the Grace of surrender, I am asking God to ELIMINATE the spaces between His soul and mine! The prayer of surrender is the prayer to SUBMIT completely with complete peace to the Holy Will of God, and this is only possible through Grace because such surrender requires a soul to completely TRUST in God.
Saint Philip Neri described this sort of love in this way when he said, “He who wishes for anything but Christ, does not know what he wishes; he who asks for anything but Christ, does not know what he is asking; he who works, and not for Christ, does not know what he is doing.”
You see, as Saint Augustine said, “You arouse us so that praising You may bring us joy, because You have made us and drawn us to Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
And I have been reflecting on that spaces that Gibran wrote about in his prose as I reflect on my life almost completely devoid of suffering… You see, though I have borne some small crosses in my life, I have not been called to carry a truly heavy cross. In other words, I have very little CAUSE for complaint because God has blessed me with a life of ease. And yet – even so – I have experienced times of terrible sadness and grief. And when I think of the most dreadful and terrible times in my life – despite having lived a life blessed and easy with very few crosses – the common element of each of those terrible times has been the SPACE that I have made between my soul and God’s.
You see, during those times, I have felt very far away from God – not because He has distanced Himself from me, but because I have turned away from Him in my grief and rage… And it is during those terrible times that I have in behaving like a petulant child – shouting my anger at God and DEMANDING that He give me what I want – pushed away from him like a toddler throwing a tantrum in its mother’s arms.
And now – with the Grace that I was given through NO MERIT OF MY OWN – I have come to realise how little space there ever was between my Beloved and me. You see, when I raged at Him the loudest, that was when He held me most closely, just as I hold my angry child close to stop them from hurting themselves in anger.
And this reminds me of my Heavenly Mother, who in the very extremity of her grief – having witnessed the death of God – held Our Blessed Lord’s dead and mutilated Body in her grief stricken arms.
And I realise that Gibran got the who thing wrong… For love is not about SPACES, but about CLOSENESS… For my Blessed Mother closed the SPACES between my Beloved and me. For she took me – in the most unworthy exchange for Him because He asked her to – while He was dying on the Cross…
And out of Love for me, the Blessed Virgin takes me to her Son and presents me to Him. For I am unworthy to ever say His Holy Name – and knowing that, He gave me His Mother – so that She would say it on my behalf… And I stop and think – with tears in my eyes – how close a love that is…
Holy is His name…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.