In his Prologue to the Rule St. Benedict says, “As we advance
in the religious life and faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God’s
commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love.”
It is love that expands the heart, love in all its
fullness. Not sweet sentimentality, but
love that expresses itself, to use an old out of fashion word, as charity, or
caritas. That love is an active, rather
than a sentimental love reaching out to others with the compassion and truth of
Jesus Christ who is incarnate in our hearts.
One of the marks of that love is commitment, a commitment to action, not
passivity.
Parents, at least good parents, experience the
expansion of the heart in their commitment and care for their children. That love often bears with it a stretching
that comes from the demands of a little child for comfort and care at times
that are not always convenient. Love
takes you out of yourself. Sometimes, like Mary our adopted Mother, love
pierces our hearts in painful ways.
The love that expands the hearts bears with it a
certain holy detachment; one cannot love effectively if one is in turmoil over
attempts to control the object of one’s love.
Love does not seek control. When
control comes in the door, love goes out the window.
The four loves, affection [love’s basic building
block], brotherly love [and friendship], eros [as a desire for intimacy] and
agapé [the flame of charity] are only manifest within us as Christ Himself is
incarnate in our human hearts. That is
to say, He is the Source of the love within us, and not we ourselves.
One implication of the incarnation of love within us
is that our human hearts are manifestly imperfect, and as a result all of our
loving, a holy as the source is, is nonetheless imperfect. It cannot be otherwise. That is why all lovers should be very humble,
knowing that even the love that expands our hearts is coloured by the shadows
of our human reality. Just because we
love, doesn’t mean that we are always right, or timely, in our loving; or that
our love is in any way invincible.
That is why, in speaking of the enlargement of the
heart, the Psalmist confesses that he does not yet run the way of God’s
commandments. He says, “I will run the
way of your commandments, when you enlarge my heart.” The running in the way of His commandments is
yet in the future.
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