The following text is drawn from today’s (12/12) Office of Readings by St. Peter Chrysologus (d. 450):
“In all the events we have recalled, the flame of divine love enkindled human hearts and its intoxication overflowed into men’s senses. Wounded by love, they longed to look up on God with their bodily eyes. Yet how could our narrow human vision apprehend God, whom the whole world cannot contain? But the law of love is not concerned with what will be, what ought to be, what can be. Love does not reflect; it is unreasonable and knows no moderation. Love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to he attainment of its object. Love destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; love follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong. Love inflames desire which impels it toward things that are forbidden. But why continue?
“It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing. That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord. A love that desires to see God may not have reasonableness on its side, but it is the evidence of filial love. It gave Moses the temerity to say: ‘If I have found favor in your eyes, show me your face.’ It inspired the psalmist to make the same pray: ‘Show me your face.’ Even the pagans made their images for this purpose: they wanted actually to see what they mistakenly revered.”
Pretty profound stuff, worthy of reflection:
In the encounter with God, the human heart is not satisfied with what is merely reasonable. It wants to see God; and not in some vague spiritual sense, but literally, with the bodily eye. It wants to touch and taste God. The divine fire, as we read, pours into ‘the realm of the senses!’ What a rebuke this is to all attempts at a spiritualized Christianity that moves beyond the body into some angelic realm of abstractions. What a rebuke, in the same stroke, to all attempts at a rationalized Christianity that seeks to bring revelation under the sway of universal human conceptions. Love cares neither for system nor for law, but only for the beloved, and these others only insofar as they fit within the sway of the beloved. Of course, we cannot interpret Peter here to be rejecting law or reason. He is only recognizing that they are not enough to satisfy the human heart, even the pagan heart, to whom our saint ascribes the same desire as the patriarchs and psalmists.
What an absurdity is this human heart! How disproportionate! To what tragedy is it destined if it feels impelled to make such bold and irreverent petitions of its maker. It is foolhardy. Setting itself up for disappointment. Tragedy is, after all, the great hallmark of pagan literature…
…but then, this is not so of Christian literature. Because, the truth is, the mystery of which we remind ourselves in Advent is that God actually obliges our absurdity. He lets himself be seen, touched, smelled, heard, even tasted. This is our hope. Let us train our desires on Him. Come, Lord Jesus.
“in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.”—Job 19:25- 27.
Strewn Seed 