We love because God first loved us. ~ 1 Jn. 4:19
Whatever else contemplative prayer is,
it is the experience of allowing oneself to be loved by God.~ djm
William Johnston, the Jesuit teacher and specialist in East-West mysticism, asserts that mysticism begins and ends with the experience of being loved. For the mystic, he explains, the principle thing is not to love (this is secondary) but to receive love, to let yourself be loved by God. Framing this idea within the context of the Sinaitic covenant which he views from the human side as being “a way of becoming fully alive, a way of becoming fully human,” he writes:
As is clear, the covenant is concerned with the last of these [transcendental precepts]: Be in love. But (and this is important) a close look at the covenant reveals an even more fundamental and challenging transcendental precept:
Accept love
or
Be loved
or
Let yourself be loved.
In New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton offers similar words that are equally incisive for us all. He writes:
The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. That faith that one is loved by God although unworthy—or, rather, irrespective of one’s worth!
In a previous blog I stated that mystics are above all great lovers, lovers of life, others, creation, oneself, and God. But it is important to understand, at least from the perspective of the Jewish-Christian tradition, that mystics are first great receivers of love, great lovers because they are the ones most aware of being loved by God who is Extravagant Lover. Long before they become proficient at loving God or loving others or loving creation, they became proficient at being loved. Sounds odd, I know, becoming proficient at doing nothing, at doing something so seemingly easy. Yet, it seems to me to be the most difficult of arts for humans to learn.
Mystics are those proficient at letting themselves be loved by God. It is this realization, this truth, this experience that contemplatives over time drop down into in silent prayer. Whatever else contemplative prayer is, it is the experience of allowing oneself to be loved by God. It is the full immersion of ourselves into the fathomless depths of God’s love. It is this crazy love too deep for words that they “hear” with the ear of their heart in the deep silence John of the Cross calls God’s first language. As I said at our last gathering, here silence is not evidence of God’s absence but rather the sign of the presence of love that words are unable to convey. It is the holiest of communions only alluded to in the exchange of love in human lovemaking.
Contemplation is a knowledge born of love, a knowledge nurtured by love. “To be still,” as the psalmist recounts God encouraging, “and know that I am God” means to experience and know oneself as known and loved by God. Blasphemous as it might sound on first hearing, THIS is our reason for being: to be loved, to be loved by God just as we are. Loving God or others is secondary, not in the sense of being lesser or second-rate but rather in the sense of being subsequent, the response to being the beloved. How contrary to the way of the world that our first vocation would appear to be something so gratuitous and undemanding, so personally enlivening and beneficial. And yet, for most of this nothing could be more difficult than allowing ourselves to be loved just as we are. What we also know from the lives of those men and women who have gone before us marked not only by the sign of faith but with the sign of being loved by God, is that those who know themselves as the beloved of God apart from “doing anything to earn it,” become the sowers of love in the world.
Mystics know themselves as madly, deeply, passionately loved by the Extravagant Lover. And it is this experience that enables or causes them to see everyone and all creation as part of this web of love strung by the divine whose creativity is only matched by generosity. A mystical or contemplative approach to life is guided by the conviction that we give love and care to the extent that we ourselves have been awakened to and experienced the unrestricted love of God. This unbounded, unconditional love experienced at the deepest center of contemplation is alluded to in our lives by those who have loved us best, that is, without conditions, be it a parent, grandparent, spouse, sibling, child, mentor, friend, or pet.
In the end, we live and love, accompany and serve others, neither out of our woundedness nor out of our giftedness. We love and serve out of the experience and feeling of our belovedness which is deeper than either the detriment of our inabilities or the strength of our abilities precisely because its source is God who loves lavishly. Mystics know there is no contradiction between loving oneself, God, others, or the natural world that manifests the divine presence. There is only the one love. And there is no love that is not part of the One Big Love.
REFLECTION & PRACTICE:
Do you know yourself as being the beloved of God?
Let yourself be loved.