LOVE WOUNDS THE HEART
All these words of love are taken from the [spiritual] emotions of the heart and the [physical] passions of the body. Sorrow, fear, hope, hatred and other emotions of the spirit enter into the heart only if love draws them there after it. We do not hate evil unless it is opposed to the good we love. We fear a future evil only because it will deprive us of the good we love. However great an evil may be, we hate it only in so far as it is opposed to the good we love. He who does not love his country much is not much troubled if it goes to ruins. A person who scarcely loves God, scarcely hates sin.
Love is the first and the beginning and source of all the passions. So love is the first to enter into the heart. Since it penetrates and pierces to the innermost depth of the will where it has its seat, we say love wounds the heart. It is sharp, says the apostle of France.[1] It enters most intimately into the spirit. Other emotions also enter but it is through the intervention of love. For it is love that pierces the heart and opens the way. It is only the point of the arrow that wounds. The rest simply enlarges the wound and increases the pain.
If love wounds, it causes pain as a consequence. St. Gregory says, pomegranates are of red colour. They have innumerable, close-set, well arranged seeds and beautiful crowns. Because of these, they simply symbolize most holy charity. Charity is red because of its burning love for God. It is filled to the brim with all sorts of virtues. Charity alone gains and carries the crown of eternal rewards. The juice of the pomegranates, as we know, is delicious, both to the healthy and to the sick. It is so mixed with bitterness and sweetness, that we do not know to distinguish what delights the taste. Is it because the juice is bitter sweet or because it is sweet bitter?
Theotimus, love certainly is thus bitter sweet. As long as we are in this world, love has never a sweetness perfectly sweet. It is never perfect, never fully content or satisfied. All the same, it never ceases to be extremely pleasant. Its bitterness refines the delicacy of its sweetness. Just as its sweetness sharpens the charm of its bitterness. How can this be done? We see a young man free, healthy, and very jovial goes to a party. He is not on his guard. He feels well. Before he leaves, love makes use of glances, gestures, even the hairs of a silly, weak creature. These, as so many arrows sting and wound his miserable heart, so much so that he is sad, dejected and surprised. Why is he sad? Doubtless, it is because he is wounded. Who wounded him? Love.
Love is the child of delightful satisfaction. How can it wound and cause pain? Sometimes the beloved object is absent. Then, my dear Theotimus, love wounds the heart by the love it arouses. But this desire cannot be satisfied. So it greatly torments the spirit. Suppose that a bee had stung a child. It is in vain to tell him: “Ah! my child, the bee which has stung you is the same which makes honey and you find it very good." “It is true" the child would say, “Its honey is very sweet to my taste but its sting is very painful. As long as its sting is in my cheek, I can not keep quite. Do you not see that my face is swollen because of it?"
Theotimus, love indeed is a gratification. Consequently, it is very pleasant, provided it does not leave the sting of desire in our hearts. But when it has left it, love leaves with it a great pain. It is true that this pain comes from love. Hence it is a lovable and loving pain. Listen to the painful loving aspirations of a royal lover: My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night when people say to me continually where is your God (Ps 42:2,3).[2] Similarly, the holy Sulamite, all steeped in the pains of love, speaks to the daughters of Jerusalem: Alas, she says, I adjure you, if you find my Beloved, tell him of my sorrow because I faint entirely wounded by his love (Song 5:8). Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Pro 13:12).
The painful wounds of love are of several kinds.
1. The first strokes of love which we receive are called wounds. For the heart seemed to be sound, whole and all its own [self-centred] when it was not loving. Once it is touched by love, it begins to separate itself, divide from itself, in order to give itself to the object loved. This separation cannot take place without pain because this pain is nothing else than the separation of living things which belonged to one another.
2. The desire stings and wounds unceasingly the heart in which it is, as we have mentioned.
3. But Theotimus, we are speaking about sacred love. In its practice, there is a [special] kind of wound. God himself causes it in the soul which he wants to make very perfect. He gives the soul ineffable feelings and attractions beyond compare for his supreme goodness. He urges and impels it to love him. So it soars up by force as if to fly higher towards its divine object. But it falls short since it cannot love as much as it desires. O God, the human spirit feels pain which exceeds all comparison. At the same time, it is strongly attracted to fly towards its Beloved. It is also held back by force and cannot fly, bound by the lowly miseries of this mortal life, and by its own powerlessness. The soul desires the wings of the dove to fly to its rest (Ps 55:6).[3] And it does not find it. Here, then, the spirit is severely tormented by the violence of its aspirations and its powerlessness. Wretched man that I am! cried one of those who experienced this torment. Who will rescue me from this body of death (Rom 7:24).
If you notice, Theotimus, it is not the desire of something that wounds the heart. For the soul feels that its God is present. He has brought it to his banqueting hall and has hoisted the banner of his love on its heart (Song 2:4). God sees the soul as his own. Yet he urges it and lets fly towards it, time to time, thousands of arrows of his love. He shows by new ways how much more he is lovable than actually loved. The soul does not have such a great strength to love him as love to force it. It sees that its efforts are so week compared with its desire to love him worthily. No power can love him sufficiently. Alas! it feels an excessive and unparalleled torment. The more it aspires to fly higher in this most desirable love, the more it experiences pangs of pain.
This human heart, filled with love for its God, desires infinitely to love him. It seems all the same that it can never love sufficiently or desire enough. Now this desire which cannot be satisfied is like an arrow on the side of a generous spirit. But the pain experienced from it does not cease to be lovable. He who desires fervently to love also loves earnestly to desire. He would think of himself as the most miserable person in the universe, if he did not desire continually to love what is supremely worthy of love. Desiring to love he experiences pain, but loving to desire he experiences sweetness.
My God! Theotimus, what am I going to say! The Blessed in heaven sees that God is infinitely more worthy of love than they give him. They would faint away and perish eternally bythe desire to love him more. To prevent this, the most holy will of God imposed on them a wonderful stillness which they enjoy. For they love supremely this sovereign will. So his will restrains their will and the divine contentment satisfies them. They accept to be limited in their love by the same will whose goodness is the object of their love. If it were not so, their love would be equally delightful and painful. It will be delightful because of the possession of so great a good, painful due to the intense desire for greater love. God, continually drawing arrows, if we may say so, from the quiver of his infinite beauty, wounds the soul of his lovers. He makes them see clearly that they do not love divine goodness as much as he desires to be loved. Any human who does not desire to love divine goodness more does not love him enough. Sufficiency in this divine practice [of love] is not sufficient for him who wishes to stop there as if it is enough for him.
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[1] St. Denis (St. Dionysus the Areopagite) (Acts 17:34) martyr and patron saint of Paris. The Celestial Hierarchies was the work of a 5th century Syrian monk who wrote under the pseudoname Dionysius the Areopagite to give authority to his works.
[2] NRSV, Reference in the original Ps 41:3,4.v
[3] In the original Ps 54:7.