Those Healing Eyes of Love

The human heart bears within itself an infinite thirst. This is not a thirst that has been learned or acquired or chosen, but is “given” with our very existence. Is this not the nature of a thirst, even on the natural and physical level? Thirst is a spontaneous longing for something that we lack, something that is necessary for our life and growth and flourishing. Indeed, thirst is a most basic experience from the beginning of our life—for we depend on the liquid that we receive from our mother from our very conception in her womb, and then on her nourishing breast after birth.

But this earthly and physical nourishment alone is not enough to satisfy us, for it is but a basis and a symbol of a deeper nourishment: the drink of love freely and unconditionally given. This, indeed, is the “sacramental” meaning of the little child’s dependence upon her mother—her utter need to cry out, to open herself, and to receive from another for even her most basic necessities. Incarnate in our experience from the first moments of life, therefore, is the reality of love—a love that is given to us and a love that we desperately need and long for.

Nonetheless, this love of the human “other,” of mother or father, of friend or spouse, is not enough to quench the longing within us. This is not only because others are imperfect, and their love can often falter and fail us, or even turn into the opposite, hurting and wounding us. No, it is more simply and basically because our hearts have been made for One alone whose love is infinite…who is himself infinite Love. It is he alone who in his Beauty will ravish our heart with endless delight, who in his Goodness will fulfill our every longing, and who in his Truth will take us up and cradle us unceasingly within the embrace of perfect Love.

Saint Augustine’s words, therefore, ring so profoundly true: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” But why does God give us such a profound thirst if it is so difficult to fulfill, and causes so much pain, anxiety, and restlessness? This is, sadly, a question that lies in a way at the foundation of our culture, not as an explicit movement against God, but as a profound sadness and discouragement regarding the possibility of finding the true and lasting fulfillment of our desires. So many people in our world experience an oppressive sadness, a heaviness of heart that recoils from yearning for greatness and nobility, for the exalted vocation of being united in love to the God of the universe.

No longer is this really seen as a possibility, as a feasible option for us—neither as the central and driving goal of our life nor as a principle that gives meaning to the concrete decisions of daily life. But what happens whenever we cease to embrace this thirst for God, whenever we cease to pursue the face of divine Beauty which can alone satisfy us? Then we disperse ourselves among the many partial sources of nourishment in this world, hoping that we can find in them the water to still the anguished restlessness and painful longing within our hearts. Or perhaps we just begin to live under the supposition that there is no hope for us to find true and enduring happiness, and live our lives not as a gift, but as a burdensome task.

What are we to do, then, in the face of all of this, in the face of a world of which God can say, as he said of his people of old: “they have forsaken me and carved out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water”? We touched upon it with the word gift above. The truth is that thirst is not the most basic or fundamental reality of our existence. No, the most fundamental reality, the most basic experience, is pure and gratuitous gift. As we see in the image of the little child, our thirst is but a response to a Love that already precedes us, sustains us, envelops and carries us. We have come from Love; we are enfolded in Love; and we are called to return to Love. The deep and abiding thirst of our hearts is but the seal that this Love has impressed upon us—a thirst that has become painful because of the effects of sin, which is precisely our turning away from the embrace of Love.

In other words, our thirst is not a burden to be thrown off, but a gift to be received, for it is the expression of our capacity for union with God. It is a sign of our vocation to intimacy with the One who is infinite Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Love—who indeed is a Communion of Persons united in eternal embrace, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the thirst hurts, if it tears at our hearts with longing, this is not because God has positively willed it so, but because our world has fallen away from the union with Love for which it was created.

We find ourselves now in exile from the “promised land,” which flowed with the streams of God’s life-giving Love, and we now wander through the desert on a long journey toward our true home once again. But indeed God is still near to us—intimately near—and his living water flows within our hearts. However, we have lost the ability to drink, the ability to make living contact with this spring flowing within us. Instead of abiding at the center of our being where God dwells, we are exiled to the surface. We find ourselves dwelling on the periphery, among the many superficial and imperfect things of this world, none of which can fully give us what we seek.

Yet all of these things speak of him, for they came from him. Nonetheless, they cannot bring us the fullness of his loving presence, they cannot unveil before us his face. Our hearts have become incapable of this loving vision of the countenance of God, of the radiant mystery of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their endless life of perfect love. We glimpse him, here, there, and everywhere, as if peeking at us through the veil of created reality—and touching our hearts with his loving glance. Through this glance he reawakens in us yet more deeply our thirst, our longing for him. But he does this only to bring us closer to the joy he yearns to give us—to open us to the gift he desires to bestow.

This loving glance awakens in us a twofold awareness. First of all, as I glimpse those loving eyes looking upon me, peeking through the veil of my life and experiences, through the beauty of reality, I experience first of all that I am loved, I am known, I am desired. I glimpse again the truth that my life is not a burden or a task, but a gift flowing from the loving hands and heart of Another. It is a gift from One who loves me tenderly and intimately, and whose love is a profound form of thirst…thirst for me. Yes, God yearns for me infinitely more that I yearn for him, and my thirst is but a response to his own thirst for me.

Secondarily, when I allow myself to be looked upon in this way, then I notice that I immediately get back in touch with the deepest desires of my own heart. Yes, his loving glance begins to draw me back from exile in the superficial to the place of depth, to the sanctuary of my own heart where I am alone before him. I glimpse his love, and in glimpsing his love I also glimpse his tremendous Beauty…and this beauty speaks profoundly to my heart. It touches the thirst implanted in me from the very first moment of my existence, this “nostalgia” for the home of God’s loving embrace from which I have come, but from which I find myself estranged. But it touches me in such a way that it gives it an “object,” a focus, a goal. No longer do I thirst blindly for “something or other,” but rather for the One whose beauty I have glimpsed, and whose beauty has touched and ravished my heart.

It is now a Person for whom my heart longs—a Person who is glimpsed and yet who still remains hidden, still beyond my grasp—and I can cry out:

O God, you are my God, I seek you,

my flesh faints for you,

as in a dry and weary land where no water is. (Psalm 63:1)

Or I can cry out with the bride in the Spiritual Canticle of Saint John of the Cross:

Where have you hidden,

Beloved, and left me moaning?

You fled like the stag

after wounding me;

I went out calling you, but you were gone.

O woods and thickets,

planted by the hand of my Beloved!

O green meadow,

coated, bright, with flowers,

tell me, has he passed by you?

Pouring out a thousand graces,

he passed these groves in haste;

and having looked at them,

with his image alone,

clothed them in beauty.

Ah, who has the power to heal me?

now wholly surrender yourself!

Do not send me

any more messengers,

they cannot tell me what I must hear.

All who are free

tell me a thousand graceful things of you;

all wound me more

and leave me dying

of, ah, I-don’t-know-what behind their stammering. (Stanzas 1, 4-7)

He has looked upon me with his eyes of love, and this glance has penetrated my being—revealing to me his immense love for me, and in this love has wounded my heart with a love and longing for him in return, who becomes the one Beloved and the ardent longing of my heart. Yes, his look has wounded me, but it has wounded only to heal—for it has reopened my heart to the gift that alone can give me life. It has awakened the thirst which he so deeply thirsts to satisfy with himself.

I become aware, as Saint Augustine says, that I am created for the One who is profoundly close to me, and yet from whom, for so long, I have been far away:

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you, yet if they had not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me, I drew in breath, and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

This encounter with Love does not discourage; it does not cast down. Rather, it lifts me up; it raises me above myself toward the One who beckons me tenderly yet powerfully. Yes, it gives me the ability to continue the Psalmist’s prayer:

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,

beholding your power and glory.

Because your merciful love is better than life,

my lips will praise you.

So I will bless you as long as I live;

I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63:2-4, 8)

Now, through my encounter with the glance of Love, my life has new direction and purpose…and yes, it bears a new-born hope. Because my very longing is but a response to God’s longing for me, because my life is his gift already given, and because my path is already enfolded on all sides by his abiding presence, I can progress forward toward the day when I will finally know him, face-to-face, in the full light of vision, and experience completely the joy and intimacy of his embrace.

In a word, the path of loving relationship with God opens up before me. And this path opens my eyes to see the whole creation, myself, and every other person in a new light. Yes, I begin to see all things within the radiance that emanates from the gaze of the One who is perfect Love. All things bear his mark, his seal, his touch, and I rejoice to see him in them, while reaching out through them and beyond them for him…for the Beloved himself. I see in every person one who has been born from Love, who is cradled in the mysterious, hidden, and yet utterly real arms of Love, and who is called to eternal intimacy with Love.

My life is now situated within the context of Love, from its earliest beginning to its last moment, and at every moment in between. Indeed, the Love that surrounds and irradiates me and the whole creation is eternal, and therefore he is fully present to me, even if I am not yet capable of being fully present to him. But knowing where I have come from and where I am going, I can welcome the gift that unceasingly comes to me—the gift of his mysterious presence and his hidden gaze at every moment—and let myself be led toward the consummation of union that awaits me at the end.

What is this “path” of loving relationship with God—and in him with every other person and the whole creation—that unfolds before me? It is the path of prayer. Yes, I am being taken up by the mystery of prayer, which is meant to fill and transfigure my whole life and its every moment. My life has been created by God in order to be an existence of unceasing prayer, in love, gratitude, and praise. And this prayer, this existence, is to reach consummation when it passes over into the Prayer of Eternity, which is none other than the loving dialogue of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who immerse me in the very heart of their own loving embrace.