Evangelical Love: Retreat Meditations

By Joshua Elzner

This book contains the meditations for a retreat for the renewal of vows of the consecrated lay women of the Apostles of the Interior Life, given from May 28 to June 1, 2018. The theme was "the mystery of evangelical love" or the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In these reflections, I tried to gaze upon the foundational realities of our existence–especially the truth of our belovedness in the arms of our heavenly Father–within which alone all the other elements of our life find their meaning and their place. It is my hope that what I have said may prove helpful to persons in every state of life, whether religious, priest, single, or married, opening the way to a deeper restfulness in God and a greater freedom and playfulness within his tender care.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Elzner
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201241391

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

MEDITATION 1

INTRODUCTION

In his Theology of the Body, Saint John Paul II talks about our original experiences. These are experiences on which the rest of our lives, and all of our other experiences, are founded. We can say that they are original for two reasons: they are the first experiences of our life, and the are also foundational for all the rest of our experiences within this world. John Paul II talks about three different experiences—original solitude, original nakedness, and original unity—which we will look at in later meditations. But for now I want to look at the single, unified experience in which these are inseparable.

The whole of our life unfolds on the basis of a foundational or original experience that is common to all of us. This experience is that of being a little child held in the arms of our mother. It is the experience of being loved and held by another. We awaken to consciousness through a loving gaze, a free gift, that comes to us from the outside. In such a moment, when our mother looks upon us and smiles, we spontaneously smile back. But who has told the child to smile, who has taught her? No one—it is a deep intuition, in which she knows, without the need for words:

"You..."

"Me..."

"And the love between us."

There is a sense of being loved, of being accepted, sheltered, and cared for absolutely by another. The little child has the experience of being totally cradled in the arms of Love, which is manifest to her through the face, the eyes, the expression of her mother. Indeed, even before this the little child experiences this shelter in her mother’s womb. Therefore we can say that, at the very first moment when we awaken to self-consciousness, to the awareness of our I, we are aware of the You of another. Indeed, it is precisely through being known and loved by another that we come to the awareness of being a person. Through another’s love, we experience what it means to be an individual who is always in relationship, who is loved and sustained by love at every moment.

This awareness of being totally enveloped by love allows the little child to be playful and carefree. We see this beautifully in little children, don’t we? Children see each moment as a gift, flowing freely within the primary gift of all-enveloping Love. And so they abide in relaxation of heart in every moment. It is because she abides in belovedness that the child abides in playfulness and joy, in the confident security of being known and loved. Even further, only in letting myself be known and loved by another, by God who alone can see me as I truly am, can I experience the truth of my identity.

I come to know myself as one who exists in ceaseless relationship to Another. And this is a beautiful reflection of the Trinity. For the Son exists unceasingly in relationship with the Father; his very identity is to be the One who is in relationship with the Father, the One who is a Gift from the Father, the Father’s Beloved. We have been created from this same mystery, and for the sake of this same intimacy.

Though in a child this intuition may not yet mature to a full and conscious recognition of God, there is still the awareness of enveloping Love. It is a promise and a call, and a deep source of hope. It can lead the child ever deeper into a relationship with the Father who loves us. However, when this primal experience of love is called into question through the experience of neglect, abuse, or betrayal—or through the movements of original sin in the heart—we begin to distance ourselves from this original awareness of Love. Then we begin to feel vulnerable and insecure, and recoil from the vulnerability of being dependent before another. We instead feel the need to protect ourselves, to put up walls and barriers around our hearts.

In our innate solitude in the depths of our heart, we remain in a pure and loving relationship. But now we close in upon ourselves in fear. Every sin, in the last analysis, is a compensation for a fundamental insecurity—the insecurity of being unlovable, of being unsheltered by Love. Because I don’t trust that Love is enough for me, that Love shelters me and takes care of me, I feel the need to seek this security elsewhere. We are each invited, therefore, to courageously confront this insecurity and to open it before the God who loves us, to let him gaze into it with his tender look. In this way he will reveal to us how he really sees us—in the unique and awesome beauty that is our own.

Thus, to enter back into the place where I know myself to be unconditionally and totally loved—to transcend broken human relationships into the place where I am alone before the Father—this is to discover the truth of my identity as his beloved child. This is to discover the security in which I am free to play in freedom and lightness of heart once again.

One of my friends from the University shared with me a story that beautifully illustrates this all-enveloping playfulness within the arms of Love.  Visiting the house of his girlfriend one Easter, he noted that her little brother (who was about three years old) would always ask, I want to help, whenever the grown-ups were doing something, like preparing a meal.

But what does he do? He just gets in the way, right? Because he doesn’t know what to do, he ends up being the one who is helped, rather than helping. Yet the essential thing, if the parents are wise, is that he is incorporated into their life, and shares in whatever they are doing—because the relationship is ultimately what endures. The task at hand is secondary to the relationship that is theirs. Even more deeply, every task ultimately finds its meaning in deepening relationship and in extending it to others.

And so this child is enveloped in an all-enveloping playfulness, and if he takes his task too seriously, he is going to be missing out on the love that he is participating in. Hence, he is going to become burdened and overwhelmed by all the tasks that are set before him—which is what, for many of us, begins to happen as we mature. And that’s not to say that we don’t have responsibilities, because of course we do. But Adam and Eve were created in an obedience that was not so much a task, but a gift. There is only one command that God gave in the Garden: don’t take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And that means: Don’t try to take existence apart from my gift. Receive everything. You have everything—except disobedience, and you don’t need disobedience, I promise.

So this state of receptivity to gift is a state of poverty—which is reception of the gift and entrustment of myself back into the arms of the One who loves me. It is also a state of obedience—which is the same thing, reception of the gift and entrustment of myself into the arms of the One who loves me. It is also a state of chastity—because who is purer than a child? They have not yet awakened to the experience of the concupiscence that we experience, and so they are able to look on people with complete spontaneity. As you know in Genesis, it says that Adam and Eve were both naked without shame. They didn’t yet experience shame, because they were completely unpossessive of one another. When they saw the other person, they saw the beauty of the Father’s intention for that person. And they welcomed that person in accordance with God’s will, and loved them freely.

We will take a lot more about this, but that is just a summary of how poverty, chastity, and obedience—the spirit of the evangelical counsels—is already present as one reality in Adam and Eve before the fall. And in a sense in a little child too, before the awakening of wounds, or before they begin to struggle with the effects of original sin, the concupiscence that is within us because of sin.

If you look at human life more deeply, you realize that a child in the womb of her mother, a child in the arms of her mother, a child playing in simplicity—is not the only sanctuary that God has sheltered for us to make contact with the original experience. I defined original experience as: the experience of all-enveloping gift. So when I keep referring to the original experiences that are the foundation of our life, I am referring to the fact that we are enveloped in Love at every moment. God’s Love. And God is trying to give himself to us in utter generosity at every moment. That is the intuition that we have an infants, as little children, but at some point there is a disconnect.

So I have talked about the reality of childhood as being a beautiful image—and more than an image—of the right attitude before God and before the gift of existence that comes from him. But there are other relationships in our life, other experiences that allow us, in a sense, to enter back into that intuition again. Falling in love for example. If it is a mature love, and not just an infatuation. There is this sense that the other person did not have to be—they are just a free and gratuitous and beautiful gift. And so you have this sense again that life is beautiful, life is good—for this person. Life is beautiful because this person exists, right? You have the experience, as you had as a little child: You and me and the love between us. The love enveloping us. So too, in pure human love: You...and me...and the love between us, the love enveloping us. It is an invitation again to open your life to receive the gift of God and to enter into communion with him.

There is another experience: when a mother first holds the child in her arms. She is on the other side of the relationship. But looking into the eyes of her son or daughter...what a gift, what a gift. And, as so many parents say, there is just this overwhelming love that flows forth from within you. I didn’t know I could love so much until I had a child. But there is an awareness—and you know this just in loving other people—there is an awareness when you really love someone that this love doesn’t come from me. This love comes from beyond me and through me. Or rather, I am just caught up in this all-enveloping ocean of love that carries us both together.

So I would speak about the relationship of childhood, which you could say is the most fundamental of the fundamental experiences. And then you have human relationship, in its forms of spousehood (nuptiality), which would be a very intense form—but also deep siblinghood, physical or spiritual, and friendship. This is a way of experiencing that love once again. And the same with parenthood.

John Paul II talks about our three primary relationships, which are rooted in our foundational experience, and those are the three he talks about. He talks about childhood, spousehood, and parenthood. And there is a certain order to them in human life, isn’t there? Childhood has to come first. Then spousehood—spousal love. And then parenthood. And then it comes full circle, for now there is another child. And the child will grow up: spousehood, parenthood, childhood.

But not only that, what happens whenever the parent’s have children, and the children grow up and move out, and then they begin to age and draw near to death? They become little children again. In the class that I teach there is a woman who works as a hospice chaplain—and we had a beautiful conversation about these stages of human life, and about how each of them draws us back into contact with the all-enveloping love of God. She says: I see it all the time in people who are dying. It is like they are becoming children again. Because they let go of control, they let go of the need to achieve and to fix and to measure up. Even if they have been fighting it all of their life, God has written into human existence, human experience, the movement that heals our hearts to surrender to him again.

Suffering has an interior dynamic to lead us to the place where we can surrender to God. Even if you are an atheist, if you