Responding to the Thirst of God: 40 Days to the Heart of Love

By Joshua Elzner

"This mystery of God's thirst for union, lived out in the Trinity's eternal embrace, is written in the depths of all being. Not only humanity, but all creation exists for communion. Every entity is drawn to, and exists for, another. From the heart of God to the heart of man, from the spiral of the galaxies drawing their countless stars in a single dance to the entwined double helix of DNA, the Trinitarian mystery of communion is reflected and played out in all that is. The kind of intimacy God offers us, even here on earth, not only approaches our highest experience of human intimacy, but surpasses it." (Joseph Langford)

From the bosom of the Trinity, three Persons eternally united in Love, the whole universe has been born. And each one of us bears in our very heart and body the "divine imprint" of the Trinity's own life of love and intimacy; and we are called to return to him through love so that, in communion with him, we may find fulfillment and endless happiness. Earthly spousal love is a dim (but beautiful) reflection of the nuptial form of relationship that God—in the Bridegroom Christ—desires to have with each one of us, and, by uniting himself to us, to draw us into the joy of the Trinity's life. For he loves us with totality, with the gift of his self, whole and entire, in the Paschal Mystery and in the Eucharist (and in prayer and in each moment of life, too!). And he wants to receive all of us, unreservedly, in response, as Saint Francis said: "Hold back nothing of yourself for yourself, so that he who gave himself totally to you may receive you totally." And this total reciprocal gift of persons is oriented towards the complete mutual belonging of the two to one another, giving birth both to the breathtaking joy of intimacy that they share as well as to unimaginable fruitfulness and radiant beauty.

In this book I try to unfold, in a condensed and yet thorough way, the heart of Christian prayer, spirituality, and life precisely as the call to nuptial intimacy with God, indeed to intimacy with the Trinity in the joy of his own inmost life. Relying on the rich fabric of Church teaching and the writings of saints and doctors, particularly Teresa of Calcutta and John of the Cross, I seek to create a space in which God can stir into flame - in our own hearts - the longing to respond to his thirst with the complete gift of ourselves, and to shine, by his pure gift, with the beauty of holiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joshua Elzner
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201265243

Book preview

DAY 1

THE PASSIONATE THIRST OF GOD

Therefore, behold, I will allure her,

and bring her into the wilderness,

and speak tenderly to her.

And I will betroth you to me for ever;

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice,

in steadfast love, and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness;

and you shall know the LORD.

(Hosea 2:14, 19-20)

The language of the Bible is a language of relationship. From the earliest history of humanity marked out for us in the book of Genesis to the final pages of the book of Revelation giving a glimpse of our eternal destiny, we see God’s plan to draw us into intimate relationship with himself. This means that, in order to understand the authentic beauty of Scripture, of the history of salvation laid out before our gaze—as well as the very meaning of our own lives on this earth—it is necessary to understand the nature of this relationship. What kind of relationship does God establish with us? How does he seek to relate to us, and how does he desire us to relate to him?

These questions get to the root issue for each one of us: who is God? Is he a relentless taskmaster, a harsh judge, a distant patriarch, a master over his slaves? Is he an egoist who clings to his prerogatives and uses his creatures to minister to his own wishes and self-gain? This is what the evil spirit, symbolized by the serpent in Eden, tried to convince Adam and Eve of at the beginning of human history. But it was a lie; and it is still a lie when we believe it today, however subtly. Whenever we flee from the face of God into sin and selfishness, we are not liberating ourselves unto freedom; we are descending into slavery, far from the love of our Father who only desires our good and happiness. For he created us out of his abundant generosity for no other reason than to share in the happiness of his own eternal life, already in this world and forever in the renewed creation at the consummation of history.

This is the true nature of relationship that God desires to have with us, one that manifests his own inner being as Love—as Trinity—in the everlasting communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the truth written all over the Bible, growing in an ever increasing crescendo throughout the Old Testament until it bursts forth with radiant clarity in the New. But this truth is also written all over our human existence, and in our very bodies as man and woman, as children, spouses, and parents. For the relation of God to us is not adequately understood as that of Master and servant, as Lord and subjects, or even as Creator and creature. As John Paul II says, The paradigm of master and slave is foreign to the Gospel. Nothing but intimacy, a deep intimacy that mirrors the most intimate of human relationships that we experience in this life, while also infinitely surpassing them in depth and ardor—nothing but intimacy can truly express the depth of communion that the God of heaven and earth desires to have with each one of us.

A love aflame with desire, burning with ardent thirst, this is the love that God has for us, for me. It is a love that longs for me with tenderness, seeks for me with passion, looks upon me with delight, and reaches out to touch me, hold me, and caress me with gentleness. It is a love that restores, through sheer grace, what my own sin and foolishness has destroyed, plunging to the depths of the darkness in my suffering heart in order, there, to affirm my hidden beauty, to set it free and restore it, so that in God, in union with his love, I may be beautiful as I was meant to be. This alone is the kind of love that can do justice to the nature of God that is revealed to us in the pages of the sacred text, and is presented to us throughout history in the preaching and life of the Church.

Yes, the language of the Bible is the language of family, and the God revealed to us therein is a God thirsting to establish a relationship of intimate love with each one of his children. From the first pages of Genesis, when God creates humanity as male and female, husband and wife, and commands them, be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28), to the climax of the book of Revelation, in which the Bride cries out to the Bridegroom, Come, Lord Jesus! (cf. Rev 22:17-21), we see that God delights in the family, and relates to us as members of his own family. Of course, this participation is imperfect, weak, and incipient at the beginning of history, and only grows gradually over time as God educates humanity in his ways and enters into a series of ever more intimate covenants with us. This climaxes in the covenant wrought through Jesus Christ, in which all of God’s activity in the world and in history reaches its definitive fulfillment, a fulfillment that is only awaiting its final consummation with the conclusion of history.

Yes, God’s relationship with us is one that is both paternal and spousal, and also brings forth in us the fruitfulness of parenthood. He wishes to relate to us, and to truly be, our Father and our Bridegroom, even if he is so in an infinitely more real and profound manner than the imperfect way these relations are manifested in the context of human relationships in this world. And through this union of breathtaking communion, we are rendered transparent to his light, living with his very life, such that it passes through us—through our own freedom joined to his freedom—into the world and into the hearts of our brothers and sisters.

God has impressed upon us, in both body and spirit, this orientation towards intimacy through self-giving. And this is manifested primarily in the three fundamental relationships of child, spouse, and parent (with friendship being, as it were, the common thread of all love in the simple mutual affirmation of persons). This vocation to love lies at the origin of our very existence—received through the conjugal gift of man and woman and the growth of life in the womb of the woman's body. And such a love is also the foundation of our experience of self and of reality—in the gaze and smile of our mother, whose very love awakens us to consciousness and grants us an intuition of the Love that lies at the very origin of the universe and is the deepest meaning of all things.

Coming from Love, sustained by Love, enfolded in Love, and called to enter ever deeper into Love in reciprocal love and total self-surrender. This is the marvel of human existence, a marvel gravely wounded by sin at the beginning of time and by every personal sin committed since, and yet a marvel affirmed and redeemed by God in Jesus Christ at the fullness of time. And this gift of redemption, of the re-giving of our very humanity anew, restored and ennobled in Christ, seeks only to be appropriated by us, to touch us and enter into us, renewing us to such a degree that the wounds of sin are healed and we become partakers in the very nature of God’s own life and love. This is the reason that we were created in the beginning, and it is the reason that, lost as we are in sin, God became flesh to redeem us: so that we may live the very life of God, as God himself lives it, and may do so, not as the result of our own efforts or merit, but on the basis of the free gift of God given in Christ Jesus.

We have been created, redeemed, and chosen to share in the intimate life of the Trinity, to be partakers in the very inner life of God. Nothing, absolutely nothing in the universe finds meaning outside of the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, all finds its purpose in the light of his loving self-communication and its fulfillment in returning to him anew, through the heart of man and woman surrendered to him in reciprocal love.

To be a beloved child of the heavenly Father, a spouse of Jesus Christ, the divine Bridegroom, and to be radiant with the fecund love of the Holy Spirit! This is my vocation and my destiny. This is the reason for which I was made by God. This is the reason that, lost as I was in sin and selfishness, covering over my nakedness in shame, fear, and guilt, he came to me—naked himself in vulnerable love upon the Cross—to reopen me to the flow of acceptance and reciprocal self-giving, to being loved and loving, that in this way I may enter anew into intimacy with his own