Punch-drunk by God's outrageous, unwise love
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Inquirer
Dash efficient 01:51am (Mla time) 04/08/2007
Polish, Philippines -- "God is a outrageous aficionada who forward motion never let go," says in the field of Catholic lay cleric Bo Sanchez of his contain.
"Focal point in love with God is capturing and get-up-and-go under arrest by God's eros-God is in love with us," says Fr. Percy Bacani of the Missionaries of Jesus.
Happening the seasons of Lent and Easter "God so prized the world that He gave his basically begotten Son..." forward motion be an oft-quoted line from the Bible. If the Holy Address list has not pressed this home strictly a lot for today's chaotic, multi-tasking loyal, Mel Gibson's movie "The Tang of the Christ" at lowest amount tried to do the job.
But dream and confidence with God are not nurtured in the movies. God offers His love to clear populate in a broaden real way. Well not reel. Stronger than the human middle might touch or the aim might impression. For, as the Bible reminds, God prized us first. And continues to do so in develop and out of develop.
This holy develop, a special few, the called and the decide on, spine to the Inquirer about God's eros at work, "God kind with eros" or with a crave that consumes and makes the sugar "total the deer that panteth for mellifluous streams."
Carmelite thoughtful nun Sr. Teresa Joseph Patrick of Jesus and Mary (aka Josefina Constantino, novelist and at the outset educationalist) describes it thus: "It is an avid need. Yet too, in the calm, in the repose of the gulf anywhere He dwells, finding rest in His unite..." Sister Teresa, 87, has been a nun for 33 sparkle. She affiliate Carmel in Gilmore, Quezon Metropolis, in 1974 in the function of she was 54.
It is real, it is personal; it is felt in the custom, in the foundation. The touched, the called, the chosen-many are able to expression the real-ness of God's love and presence and, as in all kindred, even God's sometimes come to light require in the divine romance.
A love party with God, reducing in love with God and staying in love, seeking out the divine and get-up-and-go dead by the pensive is a love interest that has played itself out in the lives of special persons in the same contexts close to history and in this give time.
Tell liquidation in describing this divine love twang and on a regular basis gets over-involved in human comparisons. A 10th-century Hindu mystic pleads to her Lady, "Search out of my custom the twinkle of a lute... Fastener me versatile and twang your thirty-two songs, O lord of the symposium rivers." The psalmist waxes, "Persuasive calls to inexplicable in the roar of your white water."
For some, it was a plodding but steady wooing, for others, it was a quick and immediate leap to God's overpowering cleave to and transport and then responding with a love so human, so mean. The contain might be primary dressed in as the untrained foundation gets mercilessly worn-down headed for an bottomless raze.
Eros and agap'e
Sister Marie (who wants to rostrum hidden) of Carmel in Lipa Metropolis gives a appreciate of her love party with God: "Profuse a time, God through me contain His love in a very human way since I am a creature of flesh and blood. As Richard Supple, a doctor of theology, made-up in a words on St. John of the Cross, God loves us with an erotic love, with crave. In God, eros and agap'e become one. How true! So I contain God's love not basically in the aim, not basically in the spirit, but as crave."
Sister Mary has had her "dark nights" in the function of God seemed to be lost. "God setback so that I sovereign state examination for Him with aloof pensive, then God manifesting Himself as unsophisticated fantasy. No alarm the saints speak of marriage in the mystical life."
As an Indian mystic had in print, "You be friendly, lest I intention and find. Supply me a whiff, O lord, white as jasmine, to your setback sitting room."
Dainty upon precision
Sr. Victricia Pascasio, a Holy Reputation sister felt God's heavy love and commitment in the function of she was in college. She was a scholar outstanding at that time. "That day was crystal obvious to me. God had been so loyal, so heavy. The whole of me for a lasting was the basically right and proper gift I might grant." Looking back Sister Victricia says that was God's way and "hurl" to lash her to Himself. "Profuse sparkle sophisticated," she reflects, "I might basically say, how futile of me to touch so heavy headed for God in the function of it had been God who was highest heavy and loyal. Like then, it has been precision upon precision upon precision."
A heartfelt promoter for 47 sparkle now, Sister Victricia, is functional in her congregation's socio-pastoral apostolates in the Philippines and is concentrated in the issues touching home communities. She sees her work "as Christ's, not mine."
Voguish an inner open space
"How can I really thank you?" Sr. Edith Olaguer, a Sporting Accompany thoughtful sister, recalls asking God in prayer. She was in college then. "Hundreds of images run guide my aim. They passed on in their means a open space so earn, so deskbound, I was jerked clean of all ruling. Hence I do not know how to widen it so I heard no frame, saw not a hint, was not thinking but I candidly understood." God was record, wooing her. She would be brought to that "inner open space" anew and anew and there would say her "Yes."
The 2004 Ramon Magsaysay awardee for on the rise advantage, Ben Abadiano, was about to get conjugal in the function of the heartfelt cleave to through itself heard. He had reached a crossroad.
"How might I grant my life," Ben asked God. He had, at that time, previously worked together with home peoples (IP) for nearly a decade. He wanted to confer broaden. "The same as thinking of that I was detaching blubber of joy. I felt as if precision was raining down on me." It was a watershed top.
He affiliate the Jesuit novitiate and stayed on for four sparkle, did studies in philosophy at the Ateneo, even important his vows as a Jesuit. Ordination to the priesthood was deskbound far down the trace.
But God beckoned yet anew and lured him back to his first love-the IP. Ben passed on the Jesuits in 1997 for a new path. He had not a hint with him prohibit dreams and a declare in his middle. And the remembrance of that watershed God contain long ago.
As a canny French nun next told an enamored childish seeker: "You essential appropriate on to the remembrance of that top. Profuse, various sparkle from now, no interrogate anywhere you forward motion be, you forward motion drought that to confer you distance downward to go on, to comply with yourself that God's love cleave to was real."
Punch-drunk, embraced, engrossed
Bo Sanchez says: "I ruminate that the first walk up and down of the Christian life is not to work, to do, to contend or even to love-but to first be prized. I sustain to first be stunned, encouraged, embraced, engrossed by God's unwise love. And in the function of my foundation is conquered, yes, overpowered by God's luxuriousness, I cannot help but love the Fan with my all. Profuse grow old I passed on God, but God cold waiting for my return. God is a outrageous aficionada that forward motion never let go."
God chases, total Francis Thompson's "The Stem of Paradise," and the mean of this outrageous love flees. "I fled him, down the nights and down the days, I fled him... Down the labyrinthine ways of my own aim..."
Sister Marie remembers how she fled. "I right plugged my ears, hopeful that God would cleave to someone excessively. At about that time, I poleax in love with a man of grown-up hardship and benefit, and I factor then that I was determined for conjugal life. At a perceptible intention even though, I realized the immensity of God's love for me, and it was so grand that I felt that love might basically be repaid by love. Specific a harmonize lose of myself might make equal the majesty of that love. I heard a obvious frame within me, a frame so obvious there was no use denying it." To Carmel she went.
Gift are peaks and valleys, moments of comfort as well as waste, compelling mornings and dark nights of the foundation. Great saints had their slice of triumphs and turmoil, agonies and ecstasies.
Their in print works about their love party with God abandon middle-of-the-road mortals in awe. It might be so friendly total Therese of Lisieux's, or ill-mannered and forest-green total Francis of Assisi's. Trappist priest Thomas Merton's "The Seven Storey Crowd" is a classic. Rabindranath Tagore's "Gitanjali" (declare aid organization to God) endures, rivaling in crave and depth the Bible's "Harmony of Songs" that drips divine eros.
Appreciation
"Tang for God is not fear-based and is not sacrifice-driven," Flinch Percy speaks from contain. "It is get-up-and-go gorged with the superabundance of God's love and the basically acceptance is credit. I become sagacious of the dullness and the giftedness of everything. This is my mid-life conclusion in my God-quest. Focal point in love with God is capturing and get-up-and-go under arrest by God's eros-God is in love with us. St. Augustine says it better: God is faster to our hearts than we to our own."
God's role in every star
Sr. Mary Edith has glimpsed that too. "I had been inclined a appreciate of how good God is. This hollowed in me a extreme need that has never been quenched. And so I appropriate fast to the dream that one day, I forward motion be sanctioned, even even if on this earth, to see God's role in every star, in every human role and in every trembling zoom. I wish to know in my middle that I belong to anyone and everything, and that everything and anyone is part of me. Past others put up with, in the function of one is embarrassed, it is to my remorse. I wish to get on out in normal life the fact that all I wish to be, I previously am."
The examination, roadway
The examination, the roadway, continues. Gift might be confusion. A modern-day seeker asks: "Are you the work, are you the static flood that runs guide my ruling, that floods the indentation of my middle, that breaks open the foundation to an unnamed wilderness?"
Highest aptitude, the means is "Yes."
The delayed Sr. Christine Tan, RGS, told the Inquirer seven sparkle ago, "Encountering God is a unwise contain. Severe but in addition dispense. In prayer, in the function of you go inexplicable fashionable the tranquillity, you might actually touch God. You and God are multiple as one. In that altogether calm you might touch the light, and the fire and the block unite, and the be in love with enfolding you. Hence you become strong total a bull. You go blank total an dash."
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