Cradled in the Arms of Love: Childlike Confidence as the Heart of Holiness

By Joshua Elzner

Holiness is often seen as a state unattainable by the ordinary person and reserved for some spiritual "elite," or at least for those who have a special vocation in the Church. However, the teaching of the Church is very clear that each one of us is called by God to sanctity. But what is sanctity, and how is it to be attained? In this book, the effort is made to illuminate the central reality of all holiness, its "inner core." And when this reality begins to shed its light, we realize that holiness is not a mere human "accomplishment," a state of self-attained virtue and autonomy, but above all a state of childlike receptivity to our loving Father, a state of communion with Christ...the state of loving intimacy with the Trinity who dwells within us. In its inner core, it is the loving and trust-filled openness of a little child who knows that he or she is infinitely loved, and so can welcome the gift poured forth unceasingly by such a loving God, and can surrender entirely into his embrace in return. All of the other elements of life and holiness are held within this primal intimacy, lost once through sin but restored within us through God's pure gift, is a wellspring of abiding peace and joy, which nothing can take away. This attitude of childlike trust and loving confidence is manifested, in a special way, in an interior openness of heart before God and before every person. Such openness, in turn, bears a "threefold" character, which is revealed through what are traditionally called the "evangelical counsels," namely, poverty, obedience, and chastity. These are not the reserve of consecrated religious persons, but manifest true holiness in the heart of every state of life, in the existence of each individual. Healing the wound of "closedness" that came about through the sin of Adam and Eve, in their pride, possessiveness, and pleasure-seeking, they are simply the expression of loving openness, an openness that flowers in profound intimacy with God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Elzner
• Release date: Feb 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201810429

Book preview

Childlike Confidence

as the Heart of Holiness

Joshua Elzner

The cover art is a painting by contemporary Russian artist Andrey Mironov, entitled The Unbelief of St. Thomas, in which Christ is extending his hand, with eyes inviting, calling him to faith in the joy of his Resurrection.

For more information on the author, or for more resources for prayer and reflection, you may visit the websites:

atthewellspring.com

The Scriptural passages are taken from:

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.

This is the second edition, updated, with new formatting, and also a new reflection on freedom (A Reflection on the Flowering of Freedom), and an added appendix (A Reflection on the Living of the Evangelical Counsels).

Copyright © 2021, 2019, 2018 Joshua Elzner

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781722375508

The true object of human life is play.

– G.K. Chesterton

CONTENTS

PART I

TO BE HELD CEASELESSLY BY LOVE

INTRODUCTORY MEDITATION:

WITHIN THE DIVINE PLAYFULNESS

"When he fixed the foundations of the earth,

then I was beside him as a little child;

I was his delight day by day,

playing before him all the while,

playing over the whole of his earth,

and my delight was in the children of men."

(Proverbs 8:29b-31)

The whole world has been born from the delight that the Father has in his beloved Son. We have been created from the divine playfulness shared by the Father and the Son for all eternity. In the depths of the life of the Trinity, the Son plays unceasingly in his Father’s presence, rejoicing to be loved by the Father, and the Father plays with the Son, rejoicing in loving and being loved by the Son. The Spirit himself, the bond of love between the Father and the Son, is the very playfulness and delight that they share. He is the oil of gladness that ever flows at the heart of the divine life.

The entire creation is but an overflow of the abundant fullness of this divine life and love, of this eternal playfulness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the Father delights in his Son, so he fashions creation after the image of his Beloved, as manifesting his beauty and his childlike dependency. He delights in the image of his Son present in creation, and especially in the human person, who in his or her unique mystery reveals the Son in a special and unrepeatable way. The Son, for his part, rejoices to see the beauty of creation, delighting in it as he has been delighted in by the Father, and loving it as he has been loved. I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited earth, and my delight was in the children of men. As the Son says in the Gospel of John: As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love (Jn 15:9).

Each one of us has been created, freely and deliberately, from the intimacy that is shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have been created from the delight that the Father has in his Son, and the Son in the Father. We have been born from the womb of their divine playfulness, from the bosom of their eternal repose. Indeed, God’s very creative activity is but an expression of this eternal play, and his work in the world is simply a manifestation of his divine repose. In other words, for God, playfulness and work are one, and rest and activity are one.

To rejoice in one another is the very life of the divine Persons, and they accept one another unreservedly, giving themselves in joy and gladness to each other. Because of this complete mutual surrender, their life is always consummated in perfect intimacy, in the communion of Father, Son, and Spirit, in which they live wholly with and in one another, in complete knowledge, love, and the tenderest embrace.

Each one of us, a unique and unrepeatable child of God, has been created to share in this Mystery. I have been made and destined to experience and to live within the divine playfulness, in eternal restfulness in the arms of Love. This is the deepest and most expansive Mystery, the Reality in which all else finds its place and its full blossoming...for this is God’s deepest desire, that for which he thirsts as he lovingly gazes upon me.

He delights in me as he delights in his beloved Son; yes, he delights in me in a unique way, unlike any other person in the whole of creation. This very gaze of the Father reveals to me who I truly am, as my life flows as a gift unceasingly from his loving hands, to be received in every moment in gratitude and trust. I am known by him fully, loved by him freely, and cherished in the beauty and mystery that is uniquely my own. When I look into his gaze upon me, then I know who I am—who I am for him who is Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love.

Enveloped in this loving gaze of the Father, I am set free, in belovedness, to live my life in relaxation, playfulness, and peace. I do not need to grasp, to control, to foresee, in a burdensome and mature responsibility. Nor do I need to seek to compensate for my deep insecurity by seeking love and refuge outside of God. No, I need only to abide in the Father’s love, enveloped in the tenderness of the Spirit and the Son, and to gratefully receive each moment as God gives it to me, living according to its inner truth. This is not a heavy task weighing on my shoulders, for when God entrusts anything to me, he is the One who remains in control—he who is active ceaselessly in me and in the world, from the heart of his divine playfulness and repose. He seeks only to incorporate me, through all the concreteness of my life within his Love, into his own eternal playfulness and creativity...a movement which is enveloped, and gives way, to that perfect rest in the arms of the One who is perfect Love, Intimacy, and Joy.

All is, truly, a gift from the Father, and when I welcome life from him, I find him coming to me unceasingly—in a secret and hidden way, but no less true—and taking me up into his own divine rest and activity. I have been made to rest in the Father’s arms, to be cradled in the shelter of his Love. I have been made to act within the divine playfulness, and to play within the divine activity—already in this life, and perfectly in heaven. I have been made to experience the joy and gladness of being intimately united to the One who loves me more than I can possibly imagine, who tenderly embraces me and holds me within his loving arms.

CHAPTER 1

HOLINESS: THE HEART OF

THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

It is perhaps a piece of important wisdom to realize that one should never write anything important in a book’s introduction—for many a reader will omit it and plunge into the text itself (and perhaps into the middle of the book, or even its end!). I have therefore made this first chapter a kind of introduction-in-disguise. Nonetheless, the meat of this book lies in chapters 3 through 6 (and then in everything that follows), and my fear is actually that someone will pick up this book and read either the first chapter or two, and then put it down before giving the later chapters a chance.

So feel free to jump ahead, to jump around, to do whatever you please (though you will probably understand best—and have an easier read—if you read from start to finish). I only ask that you give me a chance and read what I have written. It is my hope and my prayer that it will help you to encounter God and his love more deeply—and even help to bring about a profound change in your life, as the realities of which I am speaking have done for me.

Let me, before I begin, do what one should do in an introduction: introduce. We live in a society which neglects introductions, not only in our reading habits, but in our life. What does this mean? We neglect truly meeting others, truly entering into a process of mutual recognition and affirmation—this personal encounter that is symbolized by the sharing of names. It is quite easy for us just to brush shoulders with others without taking the effort to engage in a one-to-one dialogue with them. But if this first-look never occurs, one of two things happens: 1) either we never look again, and a person becomes for all practical purposes invisible to us, or merely a means to our own ends; 2) we jump from the introductory phase to the I-already-know-you phase, where we think we already know all there is to know about them. In other words, I don’t need to make the effort to really understand you and get to know you, because you are as transparent to me as a pane of glass.

Why in a book about the so-called evangelical counsels, about poverty, obedience, and chastity, are we beginning by speaking about our interpersonal habits? Perhaps you will have to read this book to find out—though the introduction may give you a glimpse. Simply said, the evangelical counsels are often a much misunderstood or ignored reality in our contemporary world (within and outside of the Church). But I have also come to see them as the most deeply needed remedy for the ills of our current culture, which is burdened by their opposite: a false conception of freedom, a deep unchastity, and a materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle. Therefore, the mystery of obedience, chastity, and poverty needs to be reintroduced in all of its beauty, so that it can be seen with new eyes and embraced with joy. In this book I am trying in some small way to do this.

Beautiful things have indeed been written about the evangelical counsels, especially in the documents and teaching of the Church, which are luminous in this matter. But still, some see them as merely the vows that consecrated persons and religious take—their obedience to a superior, their celibacy, and their renunciation of property. Their importance to the life of the Church and of the ordinary believer goes no further than this. They do not seem to trickle down from the life of consecrated persons into the hearts and the existence of all the baptized—who, by the way, are in no way called to a merely ordinary, mediocre life, but rather to the same radical love as priests and religious.

In addition to this misunderstanding, I also believe there is much more that can be said about the evangelical counsels that has not been said—or at least not emphasized. In this work, above all, I will try to trace our way back to the very foundational experiences of our human existence as they flow from the love of the Trinity. In this way, I believe, we can find a depth and meaning to poverty, obedience, and chastity which is often overlooked. Often the focus is on their external expression, on the particular ways of practicing them—and as important as this is, it will not be my concern here. Though I must admit that it seems to me that the most practical thing we can do is precisely to trace them back to their deepest origin and meaning.

I have come to understand that the evangelical counsels of poverty, obedience, and chastity are really simply three aspects of a single reality. They are, in their inmost essence, the single, undivided reality of love, which is: openness in acceptance and self-giving, which blossoms in interpersonal intimacy. Thus, I would prefer to speak of the mystery of evangelical love rather than the evangelical counsels—at least when speaking about them in their deep and universal significance. I will also refer to them, in this book, as the threefold form of love, for love is always inherently poor, obedient, and chaste. These three dispositions (or elements of a single disposition) are the form of love’s openness, in which our hearts may receive the gift that ceaselessly comes to us from the outside, and respond to it by the gift of ourselves in return. Such acceptance and reciprocal gift blossoms in a beautiful and joy-filled intimacy. In turn, this intimacy is itself inherently fruitful—the most fruitful thing there is and indeed the source of the only ultimate and abiding fruit. For the fruit of intimacy is ultimately intimacy. It is the expansion and sharing of this mystery of love and communion with others, so that they also may be taken up into its peace and joy, into the embrace of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who eternally live a life of poverty, receptivity, and chastity in perfect openness, complete self-giving, and total communion.

––––––––

All of the above being said, in this book I will try to show that the evangelical counsels are something profoundly universal—significant for the life and happiness of every person in this world. Sure, not everyone is called to their literal expression as incarnated in the consecrated life within the Church (though this is an inestimable gift of great beauty). Jesus himself did not call every person to follow him literally by forsaking their family and home and joining the band of his immediate disciples. But he did—he absolutely did!—call every person to conversion and to a transformation of life through walking in his footsteps in faith, hope, and love. He did call every person, and still calls each of us today, to a profound intimacy with him and with his Father that surpasses all that we can hope for or imagine.

In the history of the Church, there have arisen movements which tried to separate the Christian life into obligations on the one hand, and counsels on the other. The former would be binding on all believers; they would be necessary for fidelity to God and to Christ. But the latter would be totally optional, supererogatory as the formal term says, that is, over-and-above-what-is-obliged. Does this sound familiar? There has been a tendency, especially since the 14th Century, to have a legalistic view of religion, the moral life, and our relationship with God. But this is not God’s intention! All law finds its meaning only in being our acceptance of the gift of life and existence from God, and our living according to this gift. When we do so, our lives blossom in beauty, in freedom, and in the happiness for which we thirst—and which God thirsts to give us.

How many people in the pews of our Churches today are bottom-line Christians? How many do what is necessary to, so to speak, stay out of hell (or out of Confession!) and no more than this? We could compare this to a marriage or deep friendship in order to illuminate the inadequacy of such an attitude. If a husband only does what is necessary to avoid a divorce, is his marriage really alive? If he only spends time with his wife and his children when they ask him to, is this a sign of his love or the lack of his love?

Saint Augustine spoke about the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapters 5 through 7, as the charter of the Christian life. In other words, the whole of the Gospel vocation is summarized within this great sermon of Jesus. But this sermon begins not with commandments and obligations, but with a pronunciation of blessing: Blessed are the poor in spirit... Happy are you who are poor! Happy are you who weep! Happy are you who are meek! Happy are you who hunger and thirst—who are merciful—who are pure of heart—who make peace—who suffer for my sake! What kind of commandments are these? No, they are rather a sign of the inner beauty hidden in the lowliness of our lives, the flame of intimacy that burns at the heart of an existence that is vulnerable and open to God and neighbor. Shortly after the Beatitudes, Jesus begins to speak about transcending, surpassing, and exceeding the law, not as a work of supererogation, but as a simple matter of necessity. In a word: if love does not ceaselessly surpass itself it dies. And yet this very thirst to immerse oneself ever deeper into love is enveloped in a primary gratitude, a primary gift, and therefore in a primary repose. The thirst of love, in other words, is cradled within the restfulness of love, and unfolds within it. Anyone who has fallen in love knows this dynamic between grateful rest and ardent thirst. The mystery of the beloved person which is unveiled before our eyes is so deep, so profound, that it is a continual invitation to go ever deeper in relationship with them and in love for them—and yet this yearning springs from the sense of awe at the gratuitous gift that this person is, just as they are, bathed in the light and beauty of God. And God is the most lovable of all lovers and beloveds, the One in whom we can rest in peace at every moment, and the One for whom we can thirst with every fiber of our being. As Saint John Vianney so beautifully said:

I love you, O my God, and my only desire is to love you until the last breath of my life. I love you, O my infinitely lovable God, and I would rather die loving you, than live without loving you. I love you, Lord, and the only grace I ask is to love you eternally. ... My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love you, I want my heart to repeat it to you as often as I draw breath.[i]

Later in the Gospel of Matthew we encounter something similar to what we have seen in the Sermon on the Mount—namely, the radical call to ever deeper love, a love that is enveloped in gift, is a response to gift, and blossoms only into deeper gift, into a blessed and joy-filled intimacy. Chapter 19 can be seen as a kind of icon of the reality of the evangelical counsels: of obedience, chastity, and poverty. (And indeed it has been selected here among many other possible places in which the same mystery is manifested, for the thread of this truth is woven throughout the whole of Scripture.) At the start of this chapter, Jesus enters into dialogue with the Pharisees, who ask him a question about divorce: whether it is lawful, as Moses said, for a man to divorce his wife.

Christ immediately turns their attention beyond obligation, the bare minimum, to what he refers to as the beginning. He points them back to the very meaning of marriage, relationship, and love as inscribed in human heart and flesh at the dawn of creation. It is this primal and original truth that reveals God the Father’s loving intention for humanity. Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder (Mt 19:4-5). The obligation of marital fidelity in not imposed on a man and a woman from the outside, but rather arises from the heart of their mutual self-giving, from the very nature of love itself. The obligation exists simply for the good of their relationship and the happiness of them both, for they will truly be happy only in living according to the inner law of love written into their very being. Further, this love of man and woman, from the beginning, has been fashioned in the image and likeness of God—in the image of the Trinity who is a Community of Love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and traces its way back to its Source.

The importance of this reference to the beginning cannot be underestimated. Saint John Paul II took it as the very foundation of his Theology of the Body, which is a profound gift of the Spirit to the Church at the beginning of this new Millennium. Only by looking at the Creator’s original intention for our lives—and by trying to access our original experience of the Father’s hand impressed upon our being—can we understand the path to happiness, freedom, and joy. Jesus came to us, not to impose obligations upon us, but to address himself to our thirst for happiness, for intimacy, for liberty. He came, indeed, to grant us, through the gift of his Spirit who would fill our hearts, the ability to fulfill the truth of every obligation—which, in the last analysis, is but a call to live according to the Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Love that is inscribed into our very being and existence. But once we say this, the artificial separation between what is necessary and what is optional dissolves. Yes, in human life there are still commands and there are still counsels; the two are still distinct. But to the heart thirsting for love, the question is not what must I do, but what may I do—how can I love in the deepest and freest way?

But to understand this properly, we must emphasize that not everyone is called to everything, and a part of humble fidelity to God, and freedom within his love, is to walk the unique path that is my own, and not an abstract path or that of another. Precisely this is the greatest love that I can offer—to receive the unique gift that God gives me in every moment, and to live according to this gift, according to the story that he writes in his tender love for me. Within the general way of the commands, of moral law, there is the unique story that belongs to me alone, and which God writes—which, indeed, he desires me to write, with my hand sheltered within and guided by his own.

After speaking about marriage, Christ turns to his apostles, who are startled by the strictness of his affirmation regarding divorce and remarriage, and proposes to them a still more elevated way: the way of voluntary celibacy or virginity for the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it (Mt 19:12). Here Jesus invites them to raise their eyes above their narrow horizons and fears toward the expanse of eternal Love, which invites them to a freedom and intimacy that is unimaginable to the human heart alone. And he affirms that this invitation, and the possibility of accepting it, is a gift.

Gift... This will be the central, recurring theme