Loving in the Light of Eternity: Love and Intimacy as the Heart of All Reality

By Joshua Elzner

The words of this book seek to express, to make visible and tangible, the central reality that gives meaning to all of human existence: our call to experience the fullness of love and intimacy in the very likeness of the Trinity. They have been born from a prolonged contemplation of the mysteries of the faith, particularly of the mystery of God revealed to us through Christ in the Gospel, and, in the fullest way, in the Paschal Mystery of his Passion and Resurrection. And, in a particular way, this contemplation has come to discover that the "meeting place" by which the call of God meets us in the depths of our humanity is precisely in our bodies, in our concrete bodily existence as man and woman created in the image and likeness of God. It is here that the ineffable mystery of the divine intimacy becomes present and incarnate in all the contours of human existence, allowing each one of us, through sheer grace, to be espoused to God in intimate love, and also to live and manifest his own love and intimacy in our human relationships. This book is therefore a joyful immersion of heart and mind, bathed in contemplative wonder and reverent amazement, into the perennial complementarity of man and woman as an expression and an incarnation of the very inner life of the Trinity; and, through this and beyond this, it also seeks to express a glimpse, a taste, of the very inner life of God himself, our deepest desire and ultimate fulfillment. From this place, however, a rich multiplicity of reflections flows, seeking to draw the heart into the very convergence point of love and intimacy in which the whole of human existence, and indeed the whole of creation, is united as one within the eternal embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Elzner
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201603304

Book preview

This is the updated and expanded edition,

re-published in June 2021.

To learn more about the author, or for more materials for prayer and reflection (in text or audio), you may visit his website:

atthewellspring.com

Scripture passages are taken from the RSV-2CE.

Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2021, 2020, 2019 Joshua Elzner

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798556874978

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Preface

The words of this book seek to express, to make visible and tangible, the central reality that gives meaning to all of human existence: our call to experience the fullness of love and intimacy in the very likeness of the Trinity. They have been born from a prolonged contemplation of the mysteries of the faith, particularly of the mystery of God revealed to us through Christ in the Gospel, and, in the fullest way, in the Paschal Mystery of his Passion and Resurrection. And, in a particular way, this contemplation has come to discover that the meeting place by which the call of God meets us in the depths of our humanity is precisely in our bodies, in our concrete bodily existence as man and woman created in the image and likeness of God. It is here that the ineffable mystery of the divine intimacy becomes present and incarnate in all the contours of human existence, allowing each one of us, through sheer grace, to be espoused to God in intimate love, and also to live and manifest his own love and intimacy in our human relationships.

This book is therefore a joyful immersion of heart and mind, bathed in contemplative wonder and reverent amazement, into the perennial complementarity of man and woman as an expression and an incarnation of the very inner life of the Trinity; and, through this and beyond this, it also seeks to express a glimpse, a taste, of the very inner life of God himself, our deepest desire and ultimate fulfillment. From this place, however, a rich multiplicity of reflections flows, seeking to draw the heart into the very convergence point of love and intimacy in which the whole of human existence, and indeed the whole of creation, is united as one within the eternal embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The first part of this book reflects on the deepest questions of human existence in the light of the Gospel and in particular of the Theology of the Body. It addresses such realities as the beauty of true chastity, the mutual enrichment and circulation between the vocations of marriage and virginity, the unique beauty of chaste friendships, and the eternal consummation that awaits us at the end of time.

The second part of this book picks up on many of these themes, though seeking to penetrate still more deeply into the great Mystery at the heart of history—the union of the heavenly Bridegroom and his Bride, and indeed the eternal virginal intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These reflections also try much more explicitly to offer a chaste reading of the meaning and beauty of the human body, in order to make contact with the depth of God’s intentions for human sexuality. This is a reading, not only in the light of time and nature within the confines of this world, but in the very light of eternity, in which the spousal meaning of the body will be perfectly fulfilled in the embrace of God.

The third part of this book is a rich overflow, from the place of convergence in the love and intimacy of the Trinity, in which the very concrete living of sexuality in and outside of marriage is illumined from a place of great simplicity and clarity. It treats a number of practical ethical questions, particularly as relating to the living of the sexual embrace, not from a legalistic perspective, but rather from the living heart of the Mystery in which all things, spontaneously, receive their true illumination and unveil their authentic beauty.

The fourth part of this book is a collection of poems treating of all of the same themes, and seeking to allow a particular entrance into the radiance of the Trinity’s intimacy and the light that pours forth from here into our existence in this world. This radiance bathes our gaze and teaches us to see anew, to hope for, and in some way already to anticipate, the consummation of everlasting intimacy between man and woman within the sheltering embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Finally, there is an appendix which includes a few further reflections: on the inner universal meaning of the evangelical counsels, on the proper expression of the natural regulation of conceptions, and on the proper portrayal of the naked body in art and media and the beautiful vocation of the artist to portray the authentic theology of the human body.

I cannot adequately express in words how deeply this is not my book. Rather, this is God’s book, even if expressed in and through my frailty and limitation. For it has only been conceived, carried, and born in and through the littleness of my heart, life, and body. For the realities of which I speak have harnessed my entire being for years, and came to a particular intensity during the time of the writing of this book. I hope that the reader will be able to hear God’s own truth—the universal and objective truth—through my own frail and imperfect stuttering, and may drawn near to this great mystery that is the satisfaction of every longing of our hearts. It is my deep prayer that someday this mystery of love and intimacy as the heart of all reality will be understood and lived by more and more of the children of God, both in the Church and outside of her. For in this way alone can the Spirit renew the face of the earth. And I offer this book in the service of this great mystery, for I hope that through it echoes the word of God’s love touching the deepest wounds of our culture, and of the world itself, and calling us back into the love and intimacy—both human and divine—in which alone our restless hearts will find rest.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

What does it mean to be a man, and what does it mean to be a woman? Are these just cultural constructs imposed upon the individual by the surrounding society, artificial titles and stereotypes that have their origin only in humanity, and not even in the deepest strata of humanity? Or, recognizing that they are indelibly marked in the very constitution of our bodies far beyond our own choice or that of another, are they just the biological expression of our nature as a procreative species ordained towards sexual reproduction? Are they a duality similar to what we see even in the animal realm, albeit lifted up by the mystery of personhood which makes human sexuality something more intimate, more deliberate, more personal—tied in with spousal love, marriage, and lifelong fidelity—than a merely instinctual drive for the perpetuation of the species?

It is true that there are certain things in gender roles that are tied in with stereotypes and societal expectations, and it is also true that there is a biological, animal substratum to the duality of man and woman that is ordained towards the propagation of the species and the good of the spouses. But no, we cannot find the true meaning of masculinity and femininity in either of these spheres. The only adequate place to look to understand the meaning of manhood and womanhood is at the Trinity, and at the human person and human communion as occurring in the sight and bathed in the love of the Trinity. For in the last analysis, the complementarity of the sexes is not a merely sexual, biological matter, not something tied in either with mere culture or with the mere physical world, but rather something theological: man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God in order to manifest and participate, in the very rich nuances of their duality-in-unity, in the unity of the Father and the Son in the love of their single Spirit.

To be a man or a woman, therefore, is more than merely a secondary, peripheral aspect of my humanity, tied in with having certain organs or a certain physical and psychical structure. All of this is true, yes, but it sinks its roots much, much deeper not only into the personal and affective and spiritual realms, but into the very realm of God’s intentions for me as a living human being. In other words, I am a man or a woman to the very core of who I am, to the very center of my identity before God and others. And this is not just because I cannot separate my living I from its home in the body—the body always either of man or woman—but because the gendered nature of my body (which is better defined, not as mine but rather as me) is an expression, in my concrete flesh, of my innate orientation towards loving relationship. Yes, to be a man or a woman is to be created to live the reality of loving relationship with particular nuances, with a particular character that reflects and shares in the love of the Persons of the Trinity in a specific way.

And yet even in saying this, it should also be recognized that my  identity as man or woman, as much as it goes to the core of my being, is also not the ultimate aspect of my being. This is because the distinctness of the two genders converges together in a single mystery as the human person stands naked and alone before God, in a mystery in which masculinity and femininity flow together in a single disposition, a single intimacy, where the virtues of both genders interlace together as one in the depths of the human person and in their communion with the loving and life-giving Trinity. Nonetheless, even here gender remains, and I remain always either a man or a woman; it is just that this itself finds its fulfillment, and its highest expression, not in my sexual directedness towards another human person, but in my virginal intimacy with the God who surpasses the distinctions of gender while being the origin of them. For in the intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, masculinity and femininity find their origin and their full consummation, as a created reflection of the divine complementarity of the Father before the Son and the Son before the Father, in the magnetism of the Love, the Holy Spirit, who draws them together and eternally seals their union.

Masculinity or femininity is a living expression of my directedness towards communion—it is, as it were, a distillation of my constitutive relationality as a person in the whole sphere of my conscious, spiritual, affective, and bodily being, by which all of my existence and relations are realized in and through my identity as either man or woman. In particular, a close inspection of the particular relationality that is realized on the basis of my gender shows that there are three fundamental relationships that masculinity and femininity make possible: childhood, spousehood, and parenthood. In this man and woman are the same and yet different: each human person, whether man or woman, is born as a child from two parents, and matures into a desire and capacity for a spousal form of self-giving before a person of the opposite gender—a love of the total and indissoluble gift of self—and this total mutual self-giving between man and woman unseals the capacity to be father or mother by cooperating in God’s own creative activity in the world.

All of the other aspects of masculinity and femininity ultimately find their place within the orbit of these three fundamental relationships which stand, as it were, at the center of the trajectory of each human life. Each one of us has been created and destined to live, and to find the flourishing of our existence, as child, spouse, and parent. Childhood represents, and is, my foundational identity as one who owes his or her existence entirely to the love of another, to the gratuitous gift of love that precedes me.  It is a sign and expression of my fundamental receptivity, my fundamental need to receive the very gift of my own being, my own identity as a person, not as something to achieve or fashion myself, something to create or attain as a task, but as an already-given gift to which my own efforts could never have attained, but which is, as it were, already given fully formed into my hands as the primal gift of love that makes possible my acceptance of every other gift throughout my life. For it is true, after all, that my identity as a unique person is not something that grows throughout life, or can be somehow discovered later in life through my own efforts, through the fulfillment of a vocation or a mission in life, etc., but rather already exists in me—as me—from the first instant of my conception, and which can never be taken away.

This is because my identity is ultimately identical with my very constitutive relationship with God himself. My identity is, as it were, God’s very creative and sustaining love for me, his singular and incomparable love which makes me to be the very person who I am. To experience and live my identity, therefore, fundamentally means simply to rest and rejoice, to dance and play, within the shelter of the loving gaze and the tender embrace of God, before whom I am simply beloved.

From the root of childhood the branch of spousal love grows, and this branch in turn brings forth the blossom and fruit of parenthood. Spousehood and parenthood too are expressions of my being as a person created in the image and likeness of God, and yet they are not the core of my identity—the fundamental gift of my I as a beloved child of God and of human parents—but rather the blossoming of this I in an ever deepening communion with other I’s, other you’s, in the network of relationships that deepens throughout life. Yes, and this blossoming of my being as a unique person—a singular I loved absolutely by God for my own sake—allows this very singular identity to be united together to the singular identity of others, in which my constitutive relationship with God also widens to embrace and be embraced by others in their own relationship with him. In a word, deepening human relationship, to truly be intimate and authentic, flowers in and from (and never departs from) a reverence for the sacred space of childhood in each person, the holy sanctuary of inner solitude by which each person is uniquely and incomparably loved by God for their own sake. It is only in this place and from this place that authentic affirmation of one another, and the flowering of loving relationship—whether in friendship, spousal love, or parental love—can truly mature in the deepest way. And it is precisely in this way, lived wholly in the sight of God and in openness to his own gaze which sustains each person in their unique beauty and identity, that human intimacy can truly be a manifestation and a share in the intimacy of the Persons of the Trinity. It can then unfold from and deepen, in the union of two, the intimacy that God has and desires to have with each singular person, even before entrusting them to one another in order to live and incarnate his love in their relationship.

Another way of saying that human love flowers fully only when cradled within the arms of divine Love is to say that the horizontal blossoming of my capacity for loving relationship with others—a capacity which is always incarnate within my unique structure as man or woman—occurs within, and is secondary to, the vertical blossoming of my capacity for loving relationship with God. This is true even in the full expression of my gendered being, which has not only a horizontal meaning as the capacity to be a husband or wife, a father or mother, but also, even more basically, a vertical meaning as the capacity to be a spouse of Jesus Christ and, through intimacy with him, to conceive and bear and bring forth life and love more deeply into the world.

My gender, even in relationship with God, is a rich context in which I am incorporated into the very life and love of the Trinity, into the relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and into God’s relationship with humanity and with the whole of creation. And it is within this mystery of divine intimacy that human intimacy also finds its place and its full flowering—flowing from the primacy of divine intimacy while also leading into it and opening the way to living it still more deeply.

We see the full meaning of gender—the radiant beauty of the complementarity of man and woman in God’s original intentions—by looking upon the two persons who lived the reality of gender to the full: Jesus and Mary. These two persons, both conceived without sin and living a nature uncorrupted by the twisting that has occurred through the fall, lived and restored for us, in themselves and in their intimacy with God and with each other, the true meaning and beauty of masculinity and femininity. In this they are the new Adam and the new Eve, who restore in themselves what was fractured by the first Adam and Eve through their sin in the Garden of Eden.

The first Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God as man and woman, and were naked without shame—naked before God and before one another in the security of sheltering and affirming love, in which, cradled in God’s Love and bathed in its light, they could freely live their orientation towards intimacy in childhood, spousehood, and parenthood. But because of sin, by which they turned away from childhood and grasped for autonomy apart from the gratuitous gift in which they were meant to always rest, they lost the pristine purity of loving relationship and began to experience, instead, the anguish of power, possessiveness, and use which corrupted human relationships and also severed the security and peace of intimacy with God.

This is where Jesus and Mary, through God’s intentions, offer us the most beautiful gift. In them and through them God restores humanity to his original intentions, and brings it to a full flowering that is unspeakable in its depth and beauty. Yes, the narrowed and enclosed human heart—alienated from itself, from God, from others, and from the whole creation—is reopened to loving relationship and flowers in the intimacy for which it was made. And this occurs through the gratuitous gift of Love that comes to us anew in Christ and, in the very Eucharist, Passion, and Resurrection, bestows itself upon us to heal us in a way that only the pure gift of redeeming love can do.

Through the very incarnate Son of God who, from the heart of his eternal life with the Father, becomes man and lives his own filial existence at the heart of our humanity, and through the created woman who, representing the whole creation, is there to receive and reciprocate his love and to be united to him in God, we receive anew the gift of our humanity. We receive anew the light of experiencing our singular identity as God’s beloved; we receive anew our constitution as man and woman created for loving relationship; we receive anew our capacity to receive and to give love in nakedness and vulnerability, and, through this reception and donation, through this mutual self-giving both before God and before other persons, to let our being blossom fully in the joyful experience of deep and lasting intimacy.

PART I

Communion in the

Heart of Christ

A. OUR CALL TO COMMUNION

ישוע

THE DRAMA OF HUMAN HISTORY:

INNOCENT, FALLEN, AND REDEEMED

At the beginning of these reflections, as a jumping-off point for a profound immersion in the most breathtakingly beautiful realities of human existence bathed in the light of God’s love, we are going to try to get a glimpse of the big picture. First, I would like to walk you through a deep reflection upon the original experiences that are proper to us in our humanity, which is created in the image and likeness of God. I use the word original here in order to indicate not only that these experiences are, in a sense, our first experiences, but above all because they are foundational for the rest of our life and our growth to full blossoming as persons. They express the primal experiential foundations of our subjectivity as human persons, and speak in this way also a profound word about the nature of being itself. They speak about the way that we are oriented, in our very subjective being, to be wedded to objective reality in all of its beauty, goodness, and truth. And in this way these original experiences are a kind of horizon that lies behind every particular experience that we have in this life. They provide the living-context of love, and of the capacity for love, in which the whole of our existence unfolds from the first act of God’s goodness in our creation to the final consummation in which we will rest eternally in the ecstatic joy of his embrace.

In other words, these original experiences unveil the truth of our identity and our destiny. In these chapters, a great deal will be contained in a few words, but we will then spend the rest of the book unpacking, unfolding, and enriching what we have seen. But in order to speak about these original experiences, it is also necessary to recognize that human beings have not always been as they are now, and will not always be as they are. Yes, there is a fundamental continuity in our humanity, from the beginning of history to its eternal consummation—the continuity of being fashioned in the image of God and called to love and intimacy in the likeness of the Trinity. But at the origin of human history we were unfaithful to this gift and this call, and thus our history was fractured and became fraught with suffering, estrangement, and conflict. God himself alone could heal what our sin had caused, and so he came to restore us to the life that we had lost, the draw us back into the intimacy of relationship to which we had been unfaithful.

Thus, in order to provide a sense of the continuity that binds together our humanity throughout time—as well as to express the rupture that has occurred, as well as its healing—in the coming reflections I am going to speak about these original experiences in three different historical states. These three different states which we will reflect upon are: 1) The first is the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the fall. This is called the state of original innocence, in which the experience of man and woman was not yet fractured by sin, suffering, and death. But even here I am going to begin to speak about the second state, in which, through sin, we find ourselves collapsed in on ourselves and fractured from the fullness of loving relationship (with God and with one another) for which we were made. This will lead explicitly into the second series of reflections. 2) This is the experience of the ordinary human person of today, from early childhood to maturity (this is the state of historical man, as John Paul II calls it). This is a state marked by sin and suffering and the dullness of vision that result from the fall, but also still manifesting the beauty of our nature and our capacity for intimacy. 3) Finally, I will speak about the state of Jesus Christ in his humanity, incarnate in our world. I will speak about he who is the perfect Man in whom our fallen nature is restored to purity and is united to God himself in the most intimate way. This is the state of redemption which, while intersecting with historical time, also initiates in historical time something that has come from beyond history. And, at the end of time, when Christ returns to bring creation to its definitive conclusion and to inaugurate a new heaven and a new earth, time will end and the whole universe will be ushered into the very innermost life of the eternal God. This, what is called the eschatological state (the state of the end of time and of our eternal destiny), will be the subject of later reflections.[*]

ישוע

CAUGHT BETWEEN BEAUTY AND BEAUTY

The threefold schema of human existence spoken of in the last reflection is necessary for understanding in its entirety the plan of God in our regard. It expresses that humanity, historical humanity as we now experience it, is caught in the middle between the beauty of the beginning and the beauty of the end—the beauty of original innocence and the beauty of the eternal restoration and consummation that awaits us. This schema—which I explained as innocence, fallenness, and redemption—helps us to situate our current experience in the radiant light of God, which becomes a light for our path and a consolation for our hearts. Such a division is very explicit in the thought of John Paul II:

The laws of knowing correspond to those of being. It is impossible to understand the state of historical sinfulness without referring or appealing to the state of original (in some sense prehistoric) and fundamental innocence... The emergence of sinfulness as a state, as a dimension of human existence, has thus from the beginning been linked with man’s real innocence as an original and fundamental state, as a dimension of being created in the image of God. ... Thus historical man is rooted, so to speak, in his revealed theological prehistory; and for this reason, every point of his historical sinfulness must be explained (both in the case of the soul and of the body) with reference to original innocence. One can say that this reference is a co-inheritance of sin, and precisely of original sin. While in every historical man this sin signifies a state of lost grace, it also carries with itself a reference to that grace, which was precisely the grace of original innocence. (TOB 4.3)[1]

In other words, our current experience of life is rooted deeply in God’s original intention in creating man and woman in his image and likeness—in the grace of original innocence in which humanity stood before God in the perfect purity of love and self-surrender. We can only understand our lives (in both their brokenness and their beauty) by referring back to this grace, to this living relationship toward which our hearts are still oriented and for which they inherently thirst. While we have lost the grace of original innocence, we still bear the imprint of the Creator’s hand, and the experience of our first parents lives on in each one of us, fractured but still present and calling out for healing and transformation.

Let us see now how John Paul II speaks about the state of redemption, brought about by Jesus Christ:

When Christ, according to Matthew 19, appeals to the beginning, he does not point only to the state of original innocence as a lost horizon of human existence in history. To the words that he speaks with his own lips, we have the right to attribute at the same time the whole eloquence of the mystery of redemption. In fact, already in the context of the same Yahwist text of Genesis 2 and 3, we witness the moment in which man, male and female, after having broken the original covenant with his Creator, receives the first promise of redemption in the words of the so-called Protoevangelium [i.e. first-Gospel] in Genesis 3:15 and begins to live in the theological perspective of redemption.[2]

The Protoevangelium that John Paul II refers to is: Then God said to the serpent: ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed; you shall strike at his heel, but he shall crush your head.’ The very first moment after the infidelity of Adam and Eve, God throws a bridge across the whole of history—from original innocence, through historical time, to its restoration in the grace of redemption. He does this through his promise (and prophecy) of the coming of One who will conquer Satan who through his deceit once conquered man and woman. This man, Jesus Christ, in conquering the devil, inaugurates a definitive newness in the midst of historical time, and brings about the possibility of renewed innocence, a renewed love, in our world. This renewal, while already a reality now in our world, will find its ultimate fulfillment at the end of history. In other words, this newness will be brought to its fullness, to its consummation, only when Christ returns again at the end of time and brings about the new creation, where what was lost in the beginning will be fully restored, and indeed will find a super-fulfillment that surpasses it while perfecting it. Human existence in historical time is situated between these two graces of God—original innocence and final redemption—and is penetrated, already now, by the light of historical redemption that is preparing us for the consummation that awaits.

Therefore the grace of redemption, as I indicated, is not only future but also radically present. With the coming of Christ, the fullness of our divine destiny has truly been inaugurated in time. The wounds and disorder of our sin—and the results of sin in suffering and death—have been overcome through the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. In giving himself completely in love as man—a man who is, in truth, the Son of God and God himself—Jesus has reconciled God and humanity who, since original sin, have been estranged from one another. In his Resurrection he has truly brought into being the new, consummate humanity in himself, this redeemed man toward which history is journeying.

We can say that the new life is like a seed that is buried in the heart of our creation and is germinating and sprouting in the lives of those who surrender to its power. Indeed, it is at work in every single human heart without exception, for Christ has united himself to everyone, and all of us now belong to him completely as his own. But this process of healing and transformation in Christ seeks to awaken our response and our cooperation; it seeks to reopen us to the expansiveness of divine Love and to a conscious and joy-filled communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This, precisely, is the very essence of this new life: that the narrow and enclosed heart is reopened to the immensity of God’s Love, and yields itself up confidently into the all-enveloping embrace of this Love that cradles the world within itself. Within the tender embrace of this Love—within the intimate communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we are also intimately united to one another in a universal fraternity, in a new and profound friendship that shares in the life and love of the Trinity itself.

Our definitive destiny, our future hope has become literally and fully present in our imperfect journey of time—though the perfect intimacy that it seeks has not yet been realized. What has been brought about in Jesus Christ is gradually at work touching, healing, and transforming each one of us, so that we too may share in the fullness of his intimacy with the Father and with every person. This process will reach its consummation at the end of time, when God will restore fully and visibly what was lost in the Garden of Eden, and indeed will surpass it through fashioning the new heavens and the new earth which, already, we glimpse in the risen body of Jesus Christ. The dynamic of our historical existence, therefore, is a movement from lost innocence to restored innocence—from the childhood of the beginning to the childhood of consummation. Even when we have forsaken God and turned away to go our own way, he has not forsaken us, but patiently and perseveringly sought us out—throughout the whole Old Covenant in the patriarchs, kings, and prophets, and ultimately in sending his own Son to become one of us so as to draw us back into relationship with himself. This is how our existence, bearing still the marks of the fallen man, also bears in itself the reality of the new man, created in the image of God in justice and holiness of truth (cf. Eph 4:24).

Bearing both of these forces within ourselves, we are invited to yield ourselves up to the grace of redemption at work within our hearts and our lives, so as to pass from the old life to the new—from the life of sinful isolation, and the sadness that this bears, into the purity of love and relationship. And this mysterious movement from the old to the new is a sharing in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ, a journey, in him, from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday: from the loneliness of passion, through com-passion and love, into the passionate joy of unbreakable intimacy. This is a movement, as we will see, from slavery to sin (and a sense of slavery before God, who is understood not as Father but as Master) to the joyful freedom of a child of God. It is a return to the truth of our belovedness before the heavenly Father, and our willing surrender into the arms of Jesus, who wants to take us up in himself into the embrace of our loving God.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. (Rom 6:3-10)

Saint Paul understood this movement of transformation very well, when he wrote:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ... For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, Abba! Father! it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom 8:1-4, 14-17)

Indeed, Saint Paul saw opening out before him the majestic panorama of a creation already bearing in itself the seeds of redemption and transformation, and therefore crying out in labor pains to pass from the old order to the new. He glimpsed and yearned for the consummation that awaits all of us at the end of time. Here our bodies will be raised again from the tomb, glorious and radiant with the light of God, and we will be joined to God in the fullness of adoption, in the perfect joy of being his beloved children. And, bathed in this radiant light of his eternal Love, we will encounter and be united to every other person, in an intimacy that is so profound and true that it surpasses all our hope and imagination.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom 8:18-23)

ישוע

ORIGINAL INNOCENCE:

CHILD, SPOUSE, AND PARENT

What did Adam see when he first opened his eyes on the day of his creation, when God breathed into the dust of the ground the breath of life? What he saw Genesis, in many ways, makes clear. But what stands out the most is not what he saw, but how he saw. Or rather, it was precisely the way that he saw which enabled him to see all things as they truly are: for in every created reality he saw the radiant beauty of his Creator and Father, and his heart and mind passed immediately in and through them to the One to whom he was drawn with every fiber of his being.

Adam, in other words, had the heart and the eyes of a child. He looked upon all things as utterly new, as wondrous and unexpected, as a pure and marvelous gift. The animals, the trees, the plants, the water, the sky—all of it was a great might-not-have-been, and not a heavy and dull this-is-just-the-way-things-are. He saw the undeserved, free, and unceasing gift of God in every moment of his new-found existence. Indeed, this very existence was one of unceasing welcoming—welcoming of the gifts that flowed from the Father’s awesome love and boundless generosity. And in every thing and every gift—and beyond them all—Adam welcomed the gift of his Father’s very life, communicated to him in the depths of his heart, in the inmost sanctuary of his solitude. Yes, Adam knew himself to transcend the world, as immersed in the world as he was. He could turn his gaze inward and discover a whole world, a profound realm of mystery within the solitude of his own mind and heart. And this interior world stretched out to infinity and eternity at each moment of time, for it was created to rest, not in any limited or created thing, but in God alone. Adam was open in order to accept the gift of God himself and to reciprocate it through Adam’s total surrender of himself into the hands of the One who loved him. Through this mutual self-giving, intimacy could blossom between Adam and God, between the creature and the Creator, the child and the Father. And it is the most amazing thing of all, that God created Adam precisely for such an intimate relationship with the Eternal and Infinite One!

In this sacred place of his own inner heart, Adam stood alone in nakedness and dependency before his loving Father. In this place he received the primal gift at the foundation of all others: the gift of being a beloved child of the Father, the gift of being known and loved unceasingly into existence by him, and of being tenderly held in a grace-filled relationship with his God. And as Adam received this gift, he came to recognize the beauty, glory, and lovableness of the One who loved him and thus made him lovable. Yes, his heart reached out, yearned, and pined to expand into the greatness of the love of the One who loved him, and to plunge into the joy and happiness of the divine embrace. And in this same vertical expansion unto the infinite horizon of eternal Love, Adam’s heart expanded out horizontally to the creation anew, to welcome and love it within the all-enveloping Love of God.

Adam existed in a primary and painless cruciformity, we could say, as the sinews of his heart were open wide, open wide in a gesture of acceptance and self-surrender. Yes, his heart—this inmost solitude of his personal mystery before the Father—was open completely to heaven and to earth, and yearned for the blossoming and consummation of the relationship for which he was made. And God knew this openness and this desire in Adam, for he had created it in him—as a reflection of his own divine life of openness, of mutual self-giving, of intimacy between the Father, Son, and Spirit. Adam’s personal being, and his whole existence, was modeled on the mystery of the Trinity, on the intimate life of love of the three divine Persons. And he would find rest and fulfillment precisely in relationship with them—with the Father and the Son, and the Spirit who binds them together.

Adam had only to consent to receive in the manner that God willed—in accord with the will of the Father, which was nothing but an expression of his abounding generosity. This will of God, then as it is still today, is nothing but the mystery of God’s own Being—his Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love—inscribed into every thing that he has created, and the expression of his paternal care in every moment of history and of each unique life. Adam, only consent freely to receiving this gift, and to giving yourself in return, and you will find the gift consummated and confirmed forever.

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God gave Adam two most precious gifts to confirm him in the all-enveloping gift of the love that he had received. The two special gifts that are given to Adam in his original solitude are the Tree of Life and Eve, the woman. One signifies the confirmation of the vertical movement of surrender to God. The other calls for the consummation of the deepest and most intimate horizontal relationship, a confirmation of the gift of God who gives persons to one another within his love. God puts Adam into a deep sleep, and removes his side in order to build it up into a woman. When Adam, awakening, sees her, he exclaims: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh (Gen 2:23). Yes, you, Woman, are my sister, one flesh with me in this world, and a daughter of the same Father. But I see also that God has given us, as siblings, to one another in a mysterious nuptial love. Within this siblinghood, other relations can blossom as well: I am given to you, and you to me—as friends and as spouses. Through this loving union, God’s love becomes present and manifest in us; and our relationship, in turn, opens out beyond itself in a vertical movement, toward the One in whom alone each one of us can finally be at rest.

Further, both of us, together, joined by love and standing side by side, are entrusted with the mystery of the whole creation, with sharing in our Creator’s fruitfulness, creativity, and providential care. He has said be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:28). We are, my sister and my friend...we are above all children of the Father, and as children, we are siblings, friends, and spouses too. And this very mystery of intimacy will make us parents too, manifesting the mystery of pro-creation with God who lives and works in us. But first we must assent to the primal truth, to that mystery which enfolds all the rest: to childhood. Yes, we must accept being little children, cradled ceaselessly in the tender arms of Love. For what are little children but dependent and poor before Another, accepting unceasingly the gift that comes from him, and entrusting themselves in turn to the love and care of the One who loves them?

Ah, but Adam, there is a problem! You discover another tree in the garden—and this tree promises maturity. Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’ ... You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:1, 4). There is no need to be dependent as a little child, the tempter says. You can take and master for yourself. The serpent makes his voice known to the woman whom God has given you—and you stand by idly, listening without intervening. This serpent insinuates a lie into the heart of your unity, into the heart of the solitude of each of you before the Father. This lie says: God is not a loving Father, generous and true, but a Taskmaster who is jealous of his prerogatives, and who has created all things as a mere expression of his arbitrary power. Beforehand, Adam and Eve, you knew yourselves to be loved boundlessly by the tenderest of Fathers, and so you could abide in poverty, obedience, and chastity, your lives open totally to God and to one another. But whenever this lie cuts off the purity of trust in the Father’s love, you imagine the need to grasp and possess, to disobey (seeking freedom in false autonomy), and to dominate and use one another.

Yes, there are two ways of seeing this world—one is true, and the other is of the evil one. Is this world an expression of the love of our God, marked to its very core by the Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and Love of the Trinity? Or is it rather an expression of the divine will-to-power, an arbitrary exertion of God’s will imposed upon man and upon created things? In the first, to obey the will of God, to accept in poverty, and to love in chastity, is simply to welcome and to respond to the pure gift of our Father. It is to live within the truth of his gift, in the truth in which alone is freedom, and to allow your hearts to blossom in the happiness for which you were made. In the second, to do any of this is to subject oneself to a superior power, simply because it is more powerful, imposing itself upon you. Ah, Adam and Eve, you begin to believe the latter, and take the fruit of this tree—this turning away from fidelity and childlike dependence, in which you were asked to consent to remain in the all-enveloping gift of God and in his paternal care. Rather, you now insist on grasping as your own, apart from him in whom alone all things truly are.

Now, your three original experiences which were radiant with beauty now become fractured and broken. Original solitude, original nakedness, original unity—these become estranged from one another, and broken in themselves. Your solitude, Adam and Eve, in the depths of your unique personal mystery as children before the Father, is broken off and turned in upon itself. Thus this solitude of openness and ceaseless relationship becomes isolation and narrowness. You lived beforehand in a precious interiority, in the sanctuary of an ineffable mystery in communion with the Father, but now you are cast out into exteriority, and you find yourself in exile from the authentic truth of the heart.

And this narrowness and fragmentation from the truth of childhood is a corruption of the vulnerability, the nakedness which you, man and woman, experienced before God and before one another. Now you can no longer be naked without shame (cf. Gen 2:25), for the possessiveness and domination born in grasping for the fruit has become grasping for one another too. You no longer see in one another the radiance of the Father’s love, and the unique identity of the other as a son or daughter of God—loved, sheltered, and held unceasingly by him. Instead, the other becomes something to grasp, to use, to enjoy. So what can you do now but cover yourselves over in shame and fear—to protect what before was utterly protected by the Love of God which perfectly clothed you?

Yes, this very turning away from nakedness separates you, Adam and Eve, from one another—but this very estrangement is but a symptom of that deeper estrangement: from the Father of you both. For when he comes looking for you, you run and hide. I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself (Gen 3:10). Your solitude is no longer open in nakedness to sharing in the purity of love. And therefore it does not blossom in the intimacy, the joy-filled unity to which it is inherently ordered. Rather, now the solitude of each is closed in upon itself, grasping and defending. Solitude, nakedness, unity—have all been fractured and obscured.

And because of this the joy of childhood has been eclipsed by fear and by the blinding drive for a false independence from what, before your sin, you recognized as nothing but a gift. Also, the purity of your friendship, and of your spousal love for one another, has been suffused with misunderstanding, with contention, and with the blinding haze of lust. The purity of your love has now been fractured, and you are hindered from giving yourselves to one another fully, truly—for you are tempted to hold yourself back from giving all, but rather to demand more in possessiveness and irreverence, to demand enjoyment apart from commitment and gift of self. Therefore the total, indissoluble, and fruitful union that was meant to be yours, has become an almost impossible task, as you struggle against the opposing current of lust, selfishness, and sin. Even your parenthood as father and mother—and as those who care, lovingly, for this world—is obscured by the strife and confusion that has arisen among yourselves and all created things.

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Before, you were both utterly open in the ceaseless movement of trusting acceptance and loving surrender. Because of this, your relationships, with God and with one another, blossomed in the joy of intimacy. But now your hearts have turned in and closed upon themselves. Rather than abiding in the movement of openness, they open only to take, to possess, to enjoy, without reference to the meaning and purpose that the Father has impressed upon every thing. You are no longer obedient, chaste, and poor—but rather experience the contrary movement to disobedience, unchastity, and possessiveness. Yes, you feel tugging on you, and dragging you to the periphery, the threefold concupiscence. You saw it first in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil: The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise (Gen 3:6). Saint John will speak about this many years later: Do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever (1 Jn 2:15-17).

And will not the threefold temptation of the Son of God in the desert, and in the Garden of Gethsemane, be in order to heal this threefold wound? Eve, do you know that this Man will be your Son? He will be a Man by being the Son of another Woman, born of your race and yet without the corruption of sin. And he will be the One in whom God’s words to the condemned serpent become true: I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. You will strike at his heel, but he will crush your head (Gen 3:15).

So do not lose hope, first parents of the human race! Do not despair, but repent and return to your loving God! You may for a time have to be exiled from the garden, unable to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Life—for you are not in a fitting state for this. But continue to hope, for the One who comes will pass through your exile and take you up into himself. He will enter into a new garden, bearing the burden of your sin and loneliness. Here, in the deepest solitude, he will let himself be stripped naked, and will give himself utterly in love. In this way he will restore the intimate unity which was fractured by your sin in the beginning.

Isolation will again become the solitude of openness and encounter. Nakedness will