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The Fulfillment of the Human Heart
by James C. Pauley
I fled him, down the nights and down the days;
After reading these words, one can’t help but feel alarmed — because the poet is not the only one who is being hunted. You and I are also the prey. The traps are set all around us. The slightest misstep, the least miscalculation, will have the most glorious and wonderful results. The best thing that could ever happen to you and me would be to get tangled in the snare. For the the Pursuer loves us. And He is close on our tracks.
I fled him, down the arches of the years;
I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways
of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
and shot, precipitated,
adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
from those strong feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
and unperturbèd pace,
deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
they beat – and a voice beat more instant than the feet
“All things betray thee, who betrayest me.”
God’s amazing love is at the heart of Christ’s proclamation to the world — and this astonishing love is the enduring mystery which brings meaning and real wonder to human life. God is always here, loving us all into eternity. In the midst of the culture in which we live, with all of its noise, distractions, tragedies, parties and “happinesses,” the Lord is near, constantly trying to break into our lives, penetrate our defenses, enter into our reality. He is madly, wonderfully in love with each one of us — and most of the time, we seem to live unaware.
One of my favorite Scripture passages seems to get at the heart of the mystery. “God is love and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in Him” (1 John 4:16). It is this love for which we were created and if we are truly honest with ourselves we will realize that we are fundamentally incomplete without it. Oftentimes, most of us live as if we are created for other things — for pursuing pleasures of every kind, increasing our power and influence over others, acquiring greater wealth — and we spend a lifetime pursuing these enticing yet very transitory goods. And in the end, every single one of us who attains the goods without Him who is All-Good ends up bitterly disappointed. C.S. Lewis quite candidly points out that we readily settle for weak substitutes instead of the one reality which completes us. He writes in his masterpiece The Weight of Glory: “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Once we begin to imagine the heights and depths of the “infinite joy” that is offered to us in following the Lord Jesus, we see the desires and motivations of this life in an incredibly revealing light.
The question I find myself needing to ask is this: Do I truly believe in this love that the Lord has for me and the amazing joy to which I am called? Do I understand and accept that, in my wretchedness, I am loved this much? Has this love that God has for me penetrated my heart and changed me in a significant way, in the manner that God desires most? Am I still too willing to trade this life-giving and life-changing love for things that will soon pass away?
God’s Love — Like a Parent’s Love . . .
Many people may wonder how we can even begin to understand the love God has for us. One starting point is to realize that God’s love is like the love of a parent for a child. The Scriptures are filled with parental imagery in describing God’s love for His people. The prophet Isaiah cries out, “can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you” (Isaiah 49:15). This very comforting maternal image shows us the incredible tenderness with which we are loved. And even should the love of our mother fail us, God will never cease to love us. The Psalmist too exclaims, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on the faithful” (Psalm 103:13). As we know, though, a parent’s love is sometimes most clearly manifested through the exercise of loving discipline. It should come as no surprise that St. Paul entreats us to “endure your trials as discipline; God treats you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:7) It is through the trials and hard lessons that we can grow in the ability to love and trust — and it is in these times that we can be especially confident in the absolute love of our heavenly Father.
What happens, then, if we reject the love of God our Father and turn away in sin? When we have squandered the Father’s trust, dirtied the white garments entrusted to us in baptism, refused to love or forgive those around us — what is God’s love like then? If we return to Him with a humble and deeply repentant heart, the response of our heavenly Father is stunning. With a heart full of mercy, the Father says to us as He said to His dearly beloved prodigal, “Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found” (Luke 15:22-24). Yes, wonderful it is that “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Our heavenly Father loves us so much that He shows us mercy and welcomes us always into His Heart. It is the absolutely immense, unmerited love that this Father has for His children.
Many of us, however, experience a very real obstacle in accepting and experiencing the love of our heavenly Father because we have been hurt, sometimes very deeply, by our fathers or mothers here on earth. How do we even begin to approach the infinite love of our Father in heaven if we have been affected by abuse, neglect, manipulation, alcoholism or infidelity from our natural fathers (or mothers). Holy Mother Church surely understands the painful effects of this very human struggle. Article 239 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that all of us experience our parents as “the first representatives of God. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood.” Every parent, at one time or another, falls short of the love to which they are called and stands in need of healing and transformation in Christ. This is the nature of parenthood and the common experience of us all — and our capacity to see God’s love as perfectly faithful, totally unconditional, never self-seeking can be impaired, sometimes quite drastically, by receiving a lack of genuine love from our parents.
. . . And Yet, Transcending Human Conceptions of Parental Love
Therefore, it is an incredible comfort to realize that God’s love, while it is in some respect like the love of our parents, in a deeper sense, is also radically unlike the love of our human parents. Article 239 of the Catechism goes on to explain that God “transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.” God’s love, then, is infinitely and immeasurably beyond even the best examples of human love. “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways and My thoughts above your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). God’s love is perfectly faithful. Indeed, God loves us like no one on this earth can, including the best of earthly parents. He is proud of our every effort to follow Him. His compassion, His mercy, His love is manifested to us in myriad ways every day — we need only open our eyes to see.
The Price of Redemption — An Act of True Love
When I was three years old, my cousin Michael saved my life. I had wandered into the backyard too close to the swimming pool. I fell into the water and was sinking to the bottom. Michael heard the splash, ran into the backyard, jumped into the pool and pulled me to safety.
While I am eternally thankful to Michael for rescuing me, the price he paid was not too demanding. It didn’t cost him much more than a set of wet clothes. Many times over the course of history, saving a life has come at a much steeper price. Take for instance the heroic choice of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Fr. Kolbe was a Franciscan priest, who, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, was incarcerated in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After an attempted prison escape, the Nazi soldiers lined up all the prisoners, randomly choosing ten of them to put to death in a starvation chamber. This terrible punishment served as a deterrent to any future escape attempts. One of the ten chosen, Francis Gajowniczek, was a man who still had his wife and children alive in the camp with him. As Francis was pulled forward, there was some movement from the back of the line. Maximilian Kolbe quietly stepped out and asked to take the man’s place. Some days later, at the end of his strength, Fr. Kolbe was injected with a lethal substance and his sharing in Christ’s passion came to an end. Fr. Kolbe exchanged his life for the life of a man whom he may have never met.
Ten years ago, there was a speaker who came to a parish close to my home in Arizona to give his testimony. Amazingly, the man who was speaking that night was Francis, the man for whom Fr. Kolbe gave up his life. Upon being released from the concentration camp at the end of the war, this man spent much of his life travelling around the world telling others about Fr. Kolbe’s remarkable act of love, so great was the debt of gratitude that love gently laid upon him. It was impossible for this man to remain untouched or indifferent to this love — he had to respond.
The question for all of us is this: has anyone ever loved you with this kind of a love?
The answer is frightfully simple: yes, Someone has.
While most of us probably have not had our lives ransomed by another St. Maximillian Kolbe here on earth, each and every one of us has been saved in a far more significant sense. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, voluntarily took on the sin of the world, the sin of each person in the world, and suffered unto death out of love for each of us. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). What type of love is this, in which the Innocent One takes on the punishment of the guilty and suffers in our place? It is a love of unimaginable scope, a love which has the power to transform us to the very core.
Christ died for us all, because in His eyes, each of us is infinitely valuable. Every human being, broken creatures that we are, has been made in God’s image, and we are treasured. This amazing love that Jesus showed for us in offering Himself on the Cross for our sins is the greatest act of love in the history of the world. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
If we want to know how to truly love, we look to Jesus the great Lover of humanity as our model. We ask Him to transform us in holiness, to increase our capacity to love others, even to the cross. True love, real love, is expressed most clearly in self-sacrifice. On Calvary, the standard has been raised. Any act of love, to know if it is real, should be measured by this love and put to the test. This love that God has for us is the genuine thing. In knowing this love and placing our confidence in it — from this will come our joy.
How Do We Respond to God’s Love?
Our time here on earth is all about becoming more aware of this amazing love God has for each of us…and then responding to that love wholeheartedly. Knowing about God’s love without responding to it (through a life of loving others, especially those on the “fringes” and furthest from love) is to fail to reach the goal and miss the entire point of our time on earth. By failing to love others, we bury the Master’s great investment in the ground, where it remains useless and profitless. Indeed, we are loved so that we might love. The secret of life is learning to do what we were created to do: to love other people like God loves — selflessly, sacrificially, with all of our being. The Lord quite clearly issued this doctrine to all who would follow Him: “I give you a new commandment — love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34). The consequences of our love, or our lack of love, will be eternal. As St. John of the Cross said, “at the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1022). At the last judgment, we will be faced with a simple and yet terrible question: How did you love?
We twenty-first century Americans “love” all kinds of things these days: our pets, ice cream, a good movie, cheesecake. An older gentleman recently pulled me aside and made an excellent point. “When I was young, we only used the word love when we really meant it. We didn’t love chocolate. We liked it. We saved the word ‘love’ for God and human beings.” A culture which has abandoned God who is love, suddenly finds itself mistaking all sorts of things for love, so deep is the chasm which has been opened that needs to be filled.
Real love certainly does not come easily for us today — it is present through the grace of God and the generous fiat of a willing heart. The love sacramentalized in marriage is called to be animated by sacrifice, by a constant attempt to put the needs of the other in front of our own. Parenthood and family life naturally, if not easily, show us how to love like Christ. A newborn baby is totally dependent upon the love of others — and if that baby is going to survive, Mom and Dad have to put the baby’s needs first, sometimes at the least convenient of times. The love between husband and wife undergoes many tests and purifications over the years, and each is called to grow in understanding, patience and fidelity. No matter what is our vocation, our life is filled with opportunities to lay down our personal agendas and learn how to love selflessly, with all our hearts. This love, which sacrifices everything, is a shining beacon in the darkness, pointing others to the incredible love of God, expressed clearly once and for all in the mystery of the Cross.
Heaven — The Fulfillment of Love
Over a hundred years ago, missionary Maurice Belliere wrote a beautiful letter to his dear friend, a Carmelite nun, Thérèse of Lisieux before her death. In this letter, he wrote that “heaven will be the fulfillment, the perfection of what you had on earth. Jesus will at last be yours, all yours, and soon there will be an exchange of the tender and fervent expressions of affection that will last as long as eternity. Love without anything standing in its way anymore, in all its fullness, seeing it, hearing it, breathing it in, feeling it all around you invading and powerful, shared with those who are waiting for you and eager to share their love with you.” (Maurice and Thérèse: The Story of a Love, p.218). It was clear to both Maurice and Thérèse that heaven is the consummation of a life of love lived here on earth. It will be the experience of a love far beyond our deepest longings. It will be a love that never ends.
As we enter the third Christian millennium, there is a great need for all Christian believers to be re-evangelized, to hear once more the proclamation of the Good News of God’s tremendous love and his invitation to us to share in that love. The message of the Gospel is the best news that any of us will ever hear. Do we live in the conviction of St. Paul, who was thoroughly convinced that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8: 38-39). This incredible faith in God’s love must permeate every aspect of our view of the world, every fiber of our being — and this message cannot be kept to ourselves. It demands to be proclaimed for all the world to see by the witness of our lives.
I remember again my dear parish pastor from the days of my “awakening” to Christ in high school. One night, I found myself sitting alone in the back of the parish church. It was Holy Thursday. At the conclusion of his homily, this simple priest with a big heart made a poignant statement, words which he repeated at the end of every homily, words that I have never forgotten. “God loves you very much, please don’t ever forget that . . . and I love you too!” May we all take the Gospel of love once more to heart and become ardent heralds of the Lord’s wondrous love to everyone we meet. If we do, this Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 will truly be what it is meant to be, “a year of favor from our God” (Isaiah 61:2).
James C. Pauley works in the Office of Religious Education for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., overseeing the implementation of the Archdiocesan Faith Formation Program.