To See and to Hold: How Chastity Restores the Nakedness of Love

We introduced the reality of chastity in the last meditation by speaking about the “meeting of looks” between God and ourselves. This meeting of looks is the encounter of our thirst for love and God’s thirst to give this love, and indeed our thirst to give ourselves and God’s thirst to welcome us. The restless human heart, created for communion, experiences a deep solitude—and even a loneliness and isolation—which, in its depth, breadth, and intensity, is but the reverse side of the intimacy to which we are called.

Our very thirst for communion is a promise of communion; our very restless gaze, looking for the loving gaze of another, is a promise that such a gaze exists. The heart yearns to be seen, known, and cherished—and, in response to this cherishing gaze, to look in return upon the face and the mystery of the other. This is the meaning of the verse of Genesis that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed,” and indeed that they were, first of all, naked before God in complete filial trust. This was the case because they were still bathed in the radiance of God’s loving gaze, and saw each other within its light. Their glance, therefore, was not possessive, grasping, or dominating, but was a look of pure love—a look of reverence, of humble gratitude, of cherishing affirmation, and of welcoming acceptance and reciprocal self-gift.

It is precisely this spiritual nakedness of love—which overflows into and through the body—which allows persons to be united in intimacy. No longer, due to original sin, are we “naked without shame,” but nonetheless through a growing conformity to the loving vision of God himself, we can begin anew to see as we were created to see, to gaze as we are invited to gaze. Though within this creation there will never be a return to literal, physical nakedness, we can enter through God’s grace into the realm of spiritual nakedness in which heart encounters heart—in which the solitude of one person is joined together in an intimate “interpenetration” with the solitude of another. This “joining of hearts,” indeed, is the very central reality of communion, even deeper and more intimate than any joining of the body.

To gaze always in reverent acceptance of this fundamental spiritual vulnerability of each person we encounter: this is the meaning of Christian chastity as directed to our brothers and sisters. Our loving look is meant, as it were, to “clothe” them in dignity and reverence, to honor and respect them, and indeed to affirm and bring to light their own unique and unrepeatable beauty. This occurs when they are seen, not in the light of any thing that they can give to us or do for us, or through their secondary qualities of body or character, but through the innermost mystery of the belovedness before God.

In this way, through gazing upon them in loving faith, we touch their true identity in God, their unrepeatable personal mystery. And, indeed, through this gaze we can “set free” within them this beautiful reality, of which they themselves might not be aware. But when they encounter it reflected in our gaze, unveiled in our tender love for them, they can return “home” to the authentic truth of their heart, and learn to open this heart anew to the intimacy for which they thirst.

Chastity, therefore, is a way of seeing, a way of reverently looking in order to affirm, shelter, and clothe the beloved in the cradling arms of love for which they thirst. But this is not all that chastity is. In speaking of the “arms of love” we are led to the second element. Not only does the human heart yearn to be seen in love, and to look lovingly in return, but it also yearns, in a special way, for the experience of being held.

The woman bears a special sensitivity to this, a more intense and explicit awareness of her yearning to be held in the sheltering arms of another. But the same is true for the man, especially in relation to God, the heavenly Father, as we will soon see. The reason we yearn so deeply to be held is twofold: first of all, because we are profoundly aware of our own insecurity and inadequacy. Our hearts cry out: I cannot hold myself! I cannot safeguard and protect myself by my own power! I need another to be the space in which I find shelter, the space of protective love in which I am safe to open myself, to receive and to give without the fear of being hurt, abused, or wounded.

The second reason we yearn to be held is because, as we said, we have been created for intimacy. Our hearts cannot rest enclosed only within their own solitude; rather, we inherently yearn to entrust this solitude into the hands and heart of another—yes, to let our solitude “dwell” in the embrace of their solitude, our mystery within the welcoming mystery of who they are. This thirst to be held, therefore, goes hand in hand with the thirst to be seen in love—and in this loving glance to be cherished, understood, and desired. The embrace of love is but the expression, the flowering, of the look of love.

But how can we find such a look, such an embrace? Clearly, in our world there are many persons—probably the majority—who are incapable of offering either this look or this embrace. We should therefore not expect it from them, but recognize their limitations. On the other hand, there are persons—persons who are themselves united to God, to his vision and his embrace—who can manifest for us the reality for which we thirst, and indeed can grant us an intimate experience of it. If we are given to encounter such a person, this is a great grace which we should welcome from God, for which we should give thanks, and which we should live through sharing ourself with this person and letting them love us.

But ultimately the solitude of our heart, made a reflection of the very divine immensity, can find rest only in the eyes and the heart of God himself. Therefore we are invited to open our hearts to a mystery beyond: to the One who unceasingly gazes upon us in love and who cradles us always in his tenderest embrace. In him we find the Love that we seek, the intimacy for which our hearts thirst. It is he whose eyes of love see us through and through, in every aspect of who we are, and cherish us unceasingly in tenderest love and ardent delight. It is he whose presence envelops us and holds us as we yearn to be held, in arms that do not force, do not hurt, but which also never pull away and never leave us for a single moment.

Finally, within this enveloping Love of God, who sees us and cradles us always, we find ourselves able to be united with others, our brothers and sisters, in an ever deeper and more authentic way. Indeed, because we know ourselves to be seen and held, we can see and hold…we can love and embrace in some way as God himself loves and embraces. Yes, our life and our relationships can become a reflection of the very inner life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Persons of the Trinity exist in an eternal state of spiritual nakedness, in which each Person gazes lovingly upon the others and receives in turn their loving gaze, and in which they give themselves to each other so totally that they are united in a perfect cherishing embrace, holding one another intimately in a ceaseless mutual indwelling.

We were created, thus, both to be held and to hold, to be seen and to see…but above all we are invited to let ourselves be held, to let ourselves be seen. This is because, before anything else, we are simply little children of the Father, simply the beloved of Jesus Christ. Only from within this, and never departing from it, can we also see and hold others within God’s own vision and embrace. Perhaps to bring this meditation to a close, and to express this relationship between being seen and seeing, between being held and holding, it is fitting to quote something written in my own personal journal:

How much, dear God, how much the human heart thirsts to be lovingly held and cradled… I see this in every person, but especially in women, who have a special sensitivity to this. It is amazing: women are a kind of loving “womb,” a space of sheltering, protective, cherishing tenderness…and yet woman also needs and yearns herself to be sheltered, protected, and cherished.

Here we see the relation between authentic masculinity and femininity—an image of the Trinity, and of each person’s relation to the Trinity.

The woman can hold when she is herself held.
The human heart can hold when it is first held by you.
The Son can hold us all—in his Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection—because he is always held, Father, by you.
The Immaculate Virgin can hold God in her heart and her womb because she is first and always held by you, enfolded in your grace and Love.
I can receive you, your gift, your life—and can receive and lovingly hold my brothers and sisters—because you, my God, hold me, always and without ceasing, in the infinite tenderness of your Love.