We are a species of finite consciousness and infinite dreams. This is our blessing and our curse. Lower than the angels and higher than the beast, partaking of heaven and born of the earth, our minds encompass the highest and lowest rungs of creation and our spirit exceeds even these. Indeed, the dignity of man lies in his capacity to aspire with his mind and heart, and to transform into the very thing which he loves.
The capacity to love is man's gift for finding the ideal and the transcendent. Love is the fire that propels us towards our dreams of perfection, whether the perfection of our material or social existence, our biological or mental natures, or simply the finding of perfect truth and beauty and joy. In the beloved, whether a person, a field of knowledge, a piece of art, an ideal, an angel or God Himself, we seek the charms of a mysterious beauty that calls us to its bliss.
For the very essence of love is to find ecstasy in the beloved. And in the quest for this ecstasy, humanity wanders in the grief of vanished beauty and trampled dreams, assailed by dark despair, partings and the siren songs of limited earth--but trudges on, in its pilgrimage for eternity and the ideal. In most moments, the ideal eludes us, the mundane is all there is. Yet in a piece of music perhaps, or a face, or in the silence of prayer or a dream, suddenly the bliss of love returns and we lift our faces from the earth.
The heart of God burns in those who loves, and those who love see with his eyes. Through love, men partake of the divine--for is not love the Spirit of God himself? Thus in love humanity slowly discovers how the means and the ends of his quest are in fact, one.
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2 comments:
Your 'thesis' on the quest for love and the ever elusive ecstasy is optimistic.
And indeed, humanity 'trudges' on in its quest for this 'love' and this 'ecstasy'. The key word here is 'trudges' and the humanity that so 'trudges' along is also inevitably wounded.
Ultimately, the one who 'loves' (truly and divinely) cannot help but be wounded. The resurrected Christ presents Thomas with His wounded side and His pierced hands. Something has to give, it seems. Christ didn't show off His side and hands as trophies. They were presented as hard, almost empirical facts that to love as He did was deadly...that it is no child's game (though ironically, not many but the purest of child-like hearts will take up His offers of 'love'...and what 'offers' are they? For Mary, it is a sword which pierces the heart)...and that it (this 'love') necessitates physical pain and sacrifice.
The flip side of divine 'love' is to put it bluntly, mortal (pardon the pun) pain. St. John of the Cross's passionate poetry did not result from a life-time of comfort spent in the relative comtemplative quiet of a monastery. His verses were the result of much torment and misunderstood enclosure in a dark, dank cell (truly more metaphorical than purely literal, this cell).
The 'night' is as much a part of the 'light'. For what is divine 'love' but suffering transfigured (not denied, mind) so that one can smile (not falsely but out of a true and full awareness of all that is wrong and also of what can still be right) and look forward amidst the reality of a broken world, to the Christ who is ever coming (and in effect, one can argue, has already come).
I do agree with what is said, but would turn around one idea: I would much more see suffering as the initial poor and resisting response of the limited creature to the downpour of divine energy and love--than see love as suffering transfigured. Under the right assumptions, I agree the two statements can be equivalent, but regardless I feel it is much more important to put the ultimate emphasis on the eternal and the true (the Lord's Energy) than merely the passing pain. Viz:
'Yes the troubles which are soon over, though they weigh little, train us for the carrying of a weight of eternal glory which is out of all proportion to them. And so we have no eyes for things that are visible, but only for things that are invisible; for visible things last only for a time, and the invisible things are eternal.'(2 Corinthians, 4:17)
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