The Silence of Love

 

The loveliness of Spring peeping though the grey wetness of a long dark Winter. Light is brighter, lengthier and life is pushing itself upwards from the cold earth. Branches bulging with buds that signify hope, new possibilities.

Our souls too are looking upwards, our hearts more open to the immense love that God is constantly expressing, often in a language, in gestures that we do not quite understand. Or believe.

This is my Son, the Beloved, He says of Jesus. You are my Beloved Son, He has said directly to Him. And what Jesus experiences is also meant for each one of us, without exception. You are my Beloved daughter. You are my Beloved son.

To understand what God the Father is actually feeling we need only look at our own experiences of loving. What a mother and father feel for their child is what God feels for you, only His feeling of love is infinitely more intense than ours, if you can imagine anything more intense.

Not being a biological father, I have nonetheless experienced the tenderness of fatherly love for many people over the years, particularly my nieces and nephews and particularly when they were babies.

But a few years ago, I experienced something new that I had never known before.

It coincided with the beginning of the Ukraine war; it was triggered by that war that brought this young man to the edge of his mind. He was actually falling over the edge. Isolated, terrified, and unable to eat. The only person he would talk to was me, so I knew I had to fly home to him. Both his parents are dead.

I have loved him since he was a child, but when I got to see him, I discovered how utterly helpless love can be. You sit there, not knowing how to be or what to say and it is very painful to watch the suffering of the one you love and want to save. But as often happens, you have to let the other lead the way.

He was curled up on the couch, this big six-foot body builder of a man, and he asked me to sit there beside him, which I did. Then he rested his head upon my chest like he did when he was a baby, and he started to cry and cry and cry. All I could do was hold him and to pray silent prayers that are beyond words. And we stayed like that for a long time.

And in that long time, I discovered what the love of God the Father for Jesus fully means, the extent of it, the implications of it. It is a love that is pierced through with the fiercest of pain. The tenderness of the words that we hear in the Gospel of the Transfiguration become the silence of love that Jesus experiences on the Cross. An incredibly heart-felt, suffering silence that is all the more powerful in its silence.

The tenderness of those words – my Beloved Son - the power of that love would sustain Jesus through the unspeakable suffering that He would go through in His crucifixion. And the power of that tenderness that is spoken to you and me is also meant to sustain us when life crucifies us and renders us speechless. You are my Beloved son, my Beloved daughter. Listen! It is spoken in shadow and cloud. It is given to us in a real and tangible way when we receive Jesus Himself in Holy Communion.

So, let’s take a moment to listen to those words being spoken to you personally. Whatever doubts or questions are in your mind, just listen with your heart. Allow your life to be held in the arms of God, close to His heart, close to the heart of Jesus that was pierced through with the lance on the Cross. It is the embrace of Mary holding the body of her Son when He was taken down from the cross, her soul pierced with the sword; it is your own broken heart when you hold the suffering of the one you love. 

It is the embrace that brings about in time the transfiguration of your suffering and the transformation of your life.

You are my Beloved. Listen.