Be Drunk with Love

I don’t know, Brothers, if you were in the pantry that night a few weeks ago when David began to tease me. There was an inquirer with us, and while the three of us were drying the dishes, David asked: So, has James asked you his question yet? Suddenly, all the other conversation in the pantry stopped as we waited for the answer. It took a moment before the inquirer collected himself and said something like, I don’t know. What question? I can’t remember exactly who said what next, but as you can guess, the conversation turned to falling in love.

I confess, it is a question I ask most inquirers sooner or later. As I tell them when I ask it, I am not so interested in the gory details, as I am about the experience. I want to know if an individual who is interested in exploring our life, has explored the life of love, not as an alternative, but as a corollary because, I believe that the experience of being in love with another person can help us understand our draw to a vocation to this life. We come to this life, not to escape the joy, and even the heartache of being in love, but to enter into that experience as fully as possible. In this case however, our lover is not another person, but God. Just as human partners give themselves utterly one to the other, we too are called to give ourselves fully and completely to God, not as a negation of self, but as a total offering of love.

This total self-offering to God as an act of love is our response to God who first loved us. As First John reminds us: In this is love, not that we loved God but that [God] loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.[1]

Scripture vibrates with love. We heard last night at Evening Prayer: I have loved you with an everlasting love.[2] The Song of Songs tells us to be drunk with love.[3] And the gospels remind us that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.[4] In one of the Prayers for Mission at Morning Prayer we pray: Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you.[5]

The love we discover in Scripture is a passionate, all-consuming love, one for the other, which with human partners, gives them the courage, and audacity, to pledge themselves to each other for the rest of their lives, to the exclusion of all others. It is this same passionate, all-consuming love for God that brings us to this place.

That’s what I want to know when I ask an inquirer to tell me of their experience of falling in love. I want to know if they have fallen in love with God, because that, I think, is what this life is all about. We come here because we have fallen in love with God and we want to give ourselves up to God for the rest of our lives. We put it this way in the Rule: We whom God calls into this Society have been drawn into union with Christ by the power of his cross and resurrection; we have been reborn in him by water and the Spirit. God chooses us from varied places and backgrounds to become a company of friends, spending our whole life abiding in him and giving ourselves up to the attraction of his glory. Our community was called into being by God so that we may be entirely consecrated to him….[6] The key words for me in that passage of the Rule are union, spending, giving and entirely, all because God chooses us and because God has chosen us, we can do no other. As Isaac Watts says in his hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.[7]

With all this talk of passionate, all-consuming love that we find in Scripture, it should come as no surprise that Father Benson speaks a great deal of love as found in the heart of Jesus. Although he doesn’t speak of falling in love (at least I haven’t yet found him using that expression), the love he describes is that same passionate, all-consuming love which caused Jesus to lay down his life for his friends.[8] In the Advent Retreat of 1875, Father Benson tells the community to dwell in the Heart of Jesus. Read the mysteries of love which can only be found in that sacred enclosure; as thou goest on thy way let this be the power of all thy actions, so will he make thee to triumph.[9] On another occasion he told the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, on their retreat in 1868, that the soul gives its affections to Jesus, and as it rests in him, Jesus’ love becomes a mighty power … carrying our daily life along with him. The power of the love of Jesus is all-satisfying.[10] In that same retreat to the All Saints Sisters he said: we must go forth into the world with a heart that imitates the Heart of Jesus. It is for us to seek to have that Heart really communicated to us; it is for us to ask him to take our hearts away and give us His, – that Heart which he yearns to find reproduced.[11]

We come to this life, not to escape love, but because our hearts are full of love for God. We have fallen in love, not with another person, but with God, and like a gentle lover, God has melted our hearts. Like lovers who have in a sense, exchanged their hearts, the heart of Jesus has filled our lives with his love, and we can do no other but to abide in that love.[12]

But the love of Jesus is no easy thing to possess. The Heart of Jesus is no easy thing to cling to. If we truly love as Jesus does, then like him, we will love even if it means death.

 

One of a series of addresses given by James Koester SSJE to the brothers of The Society of Saint John the Evangelist at the Friday morning Eucharist in the monastery chapel. Originally given on 23 June 2017.

[1] 1 John 4: 10

[2] Jeremiah 31: 3b This is the first lesson appointed for First Evensong of the Feast of the Sacred Heart

[3] Song of Songs 5: 1

[4] John 3: 16

[5] BCP 1979, page 101

[6] SSJE, Rule of Life, The Call of the Society, chapter 1, page 2

[7] Watts, Isaac (1674 – 1748) The Hymnal 1982, Hymn 474

[8] John 15: 13

[9] Benson, Richard Meux, Advent Retreat, 1875 as quoted in Look to the Glory, page 31

[10] Benson, Richard Meux, Retreat Given to the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, 1868, as quoted in Look to the Glory, page 27

[11] Ibid, page 30

[12] John 15: 9