Three Relationships: Belovedness, Union, and Fruitfulness

At the foundation and the root of our human life is the mystery of childhood, to which we have devoted a great deal of attention. We described this mystery of filial relationship with God as the meeting-place at the heart of the Church where all persons are most deeply united in the central truth that binds us all together, as well as the place of the most authentic uniqueness of each person as a child of God. In this sacred place each one of us is invited to abide in the bosom of the Father, as the eternal Son, Jesus Christ, abides always in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18). After this we spoke of the nuptial dimension of the human and Christian life—as an espousal to the Son of God who has become flesh in order to unite himself to us and to draw us, who have gone astray in sin, back into the embrace of the Father. Before God, therefore, we are both child and spouse, and God thirsts to bring to full flowering in each of us the meaning of both of these forms of relationship, with their unique “genius” and beauty.

Of course, being a child of God far surpasses the mere reality of being a child of human parents, while perfecting this in a most eminent way by taking it up into its highest goal through adoption into the very life of the Holy Trinity. The same is true for the nuptial relationship with the Bridegroom Christ; this fulfills all the inherent meanings of spousal love within creation and yet also infinitely transcends them. For one, this nuptial union is utterly chaste and virginal, a “becoming one flesh” and “one spirit” in a profoundly new way made possibly only through the redemption brought by Christ. It is a mutual self-giving and mutual acceptance between persons in love—as the conjugal union of man and woman—and it also allows a deep indwelling of lover and beloved in one another. However, this new mutual giving and the depth of this indwelling is so profound, so intimate, so radical, that the merely natural union can only pale in comparison.

In a word, in the spousal union with Christ, the “image” that we glimpse in natural human love finds its full flowering. This is the “great mystery” that Saint Paul speaks of in Ephesians 5, which he discerns in the Sacrament of Marriage and yet glimpses, as it were, as the “Horizon” toward which this Sacrament is oriented as its highest goal: the conjugal union of each human person, and of the universal Church in her entirety, with Jesus Christ.

All of this being said, we can now speak of the third form of relationship that blossoms in the life of union with God. This is the relationship of fatherhood or motherhood. Just as in human life these three relationships exist in a dynamic union with one another, so the same is true on the spiritual and supernatural level. Each one of us is born as a child of our parents, and we start out in a state of complete dependency upon their love, their shelter, and their care. And to the degree that we welcome this love and these foundational relationships, we will mature into authentic love, acceptance, and reciprocal self-giving. And then there comes a point when our capacities for love blossom also in the readiness and the desire for the unique depth and reciprocity—and the particular union, indissolubility, and fruitfulness—of the spousal relationship. Finally, when this spousal union is lived authentically, as a true and complete mutual self-giving of the spouses, then the fruit of new life in parenthood springs forth spontaneously from this union.

We see, then, how childhood is the root and branch from which spousal love flowers; and the fruit of this flowering is the beauty of parenthood. In this way, too, these relationships come “full circle,” for we began with childhood and we end with childhood again. The persons who were once little children themselves have now, through their love, cooperated in allowing God to bring forth a new child into the world. But not only this: the parents themselves are led back, anew, to experience the truth of their own childhood again, and more deeply still, through seeing it reflecting in the face of their child. This is a childhood, not of the flesh, but of the spirit, in which the dispositions of radical trust and receptivity transcend one’s human parents toward the heavenly Father, who is consciously embraced at the Rock and Foundation of one’s life, and whose Love is seen to cradle and shelter one’s entire existence. In being root and branch, therefore, childhood is in no way something that is “left behind” for the sake of the other relationships. Rather, it would be more accurate to say that it is the all-enveloping mystery in which the other relationships can authentically unfold. It is never for a single moment necessary to separate ourselves from this truth of childhood before God; rather, this is the very foundation of our life at every moment, within which nuptial and parental love truly blossom and bear fruit.

We see this threefold mystery of relationship in a beautiful way in the Virgin Mary. In reading the Annunciation scene, we can discern the fact that Mary is enfolded in these three forms of relationship in an intense way: in daughterhood, in spousehood, and in motherhood. Mary is, and knows herself to be, a beloved child of the heavenly Father. When the angel Gabriel addresses her in greeting, it is this truth, also, which he emphasizes. It is interesting that he does not call her by her natural earthly name—Mary—but rather gives her a new name, the name known only to God: Kekaritomene. This word, usually translated as “full of grace,” is very rich in meaning. The root word charis means gift, grace, favor, or love bestowed from One to another. And the form of the word is a perfect participle, meaning that it is past, present, and future all at once—indicating an enduring, constant, and unbroken state, and one that is received from another (passively). Therefore, we can understand Mary’s own unique name as meaning: you who have been, are, and ever will be loved by God.

This pure and abiding gift of God’s love for Mary is the source of her authentic and unrepeatable personal identity. It is, in other words, precisely God’s love which makes her the person she is. This “belovedness” is precisely what we have been trying to indicate as the truth of childhood. It is the all-enveloping truth in which the rest of our life unfolds, the root from which all things spring and from which they never depart.

Indeed, it is precisely Mary’s joyful awareness of her belovedness before God that enables her to open her heart and her life to welcome him as he comes to her. She can open herself as a bride precisely because she is aware of God’s intense love for her; she can receive his gift of self because she already knows his utter trustworthiness, his utter desire for her good, and his utter beauty—revealed through the Love that has gently cradled her from her earliest days. This gift of childhood, therefore, blossoms in Mary’s heart into a total and radical bridal receptivity to God. She receives, as it were, God’s “marriage proposal,” which comes to her through the message of the angel. And she responds with her whole being: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

This act of complete consent is a “seal” set upon the gift of God’s Love, which Mary has received from the first instant of her existence. Her consent to Love is itself dependent upon this prior gift of Love, and yet when she consents to this Love she is freely affirming the gift that precedes, accompanies, and sustains her always. Her loving assent is her “binding of self” to the Beloved, in a total and irrevocable way:

I am yours forever, and I want nothing, absolutely nothing, to separate me from you. I give myself into your hands totally, in trust and simplicity, and aflame with the longing of love. And in this surrender I give you complete permission to take possession of my life, of all that I am, within the mystery of your Love. You do not even need to ask me again, in the future, whether I will say “yes” to what you desire. You do not need to confer with me, my Love, about whether I am willing. I give you, in this moment, my willingness and my “yes” forever. Simply do anything and everything that you desire, for me, in me, and through me…for I know that it is all Love and only Love.

The bridal consent of Mary is total, pure, and irrevocable. It is this way because her assent is without the least shadow of sin. When she hands herself over, it is completely and forever. Nonetheless, this handing-over is made present and alive—it becomes “incarnate”—in each succeeding moment of her life. Though she has given complete permission, God does not simply “use” her without eliciting anew at every moment her free and conscious “yes.” He does not use her, in other words, as an impersonal object or a mere instrument. Rather, he utterly respects and reverences her at every moment of her life, and never does anything in her or through her without seeking her willingness, her loving and trust-filled acceptance. This is above all simply because her “yes” is actually what he desires more than anything else—that is, the free love of her heart willingly given. Anything else just flows from this fundamental “yes” of love, in which the heart of Mary is joined to the heart of God in intimate love—in which the two “Yeses,” that of God and that of Mary, encounter and interlace in a profound unity. They are like two rings that have been interlocked and, while remaining distinct, are inseparably joined to one another.

Finally, from this union of “Yeses”—and even more, from this union of hearts that occurs in the meeting of these two consents—all fruitfulness and goodness spring forth. In Mary’s case, this is the very supreme “fruit of her womb,” the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom she consents to conceive precisely in her bridal “yes” to God. And then, later in her life, her openness to God flowers in the fruitfulness that makes her the Mother of all the faithful…of all who are born from the complete gift of Christ’s love on the Cross, from the blood and water that flow from his pierced Heart. And Mary stands here, as the bride receiving the gift of the Bridegroom and giving herself in return. Therefore she stands, forever, at the very heart of the Church, from which, as from a wellspring, all the activities and movements of grace and salvation flow, and to which they return.

We can summarize this threefold movement of relationship in these three words: Belovedness. Union. Fruitfulness. Belovedness corresponds with what we have been speaking of about the reality of spiritual childhood. Union is the innermost desire and the primary fruit of the spousal mystery to which God invites each of us. And fruitfulness, springing as it does from the union of our hearts and lives with God, corresponds to the mystery of fatherhood or motherhood—our transparency to the creative activity of God himself in this world. Each one of these forms of relationship springs forth from the preceding and depends upon it—as childhood flowers in spousehood, and spousehood blossoms in parenthood, and parenthood flows back to childhood again. At every moment, this dynamic movement of love and relationship is cradled within the intimate and all-encompassing Love of God; and it reveals his ineffable Beauty, drawing our hearts ever more deeply back to himself who thirsts so deeply to be in relationship with us.