How does the Father draw us? By love.
For God is love, as St. John tells us in his First Letter. And love is known
only by love. In the experience of being drawn, we experience
nothing less than the logic of love: Amando
trahitur, Augustine says, it is through the pleasure of loving that one is
drawn. “Give me a man who loves, and he will understand what I say,” he
says. As William of St. Thierry says,
“In the things which pertain to God, the sense that allows the mind to attain
them is love.” Love, William explains, is nothing other than a will that is
vehement and well-ordered. And
this love that is able to receive and be drawn by the God of love comes to us
as a pure gift. When God comes to us as love, he brings with him the love that
we need if we are to believe him and know him. In other words it is by
remaining open to and accepting the grace of love offered by the Father through
the Spirit of Truth that we come to the Son and through him to the Father. In
this process our hearts are purified, strengthened and set free, so that we can
let go of idolatrous ways of thinking.
It is in the
gift of Charity that the genuine encounter with God’s takes place. Our task is
simple readiness to receive this gift when and as God wishes to give it and
then to give it away, in praise and thanksgiving to God and in the love and
service of our neighbor. Our guide and example in this open readiness is Mary,
who in her assent, received the fullness of God. May she come to our
assistance, that we may conceive him in our hearts and come to see him as he
is.
Picture by Brother Brian. Meditation by Father Timothy.
