We will naturally desire to experience the sweet love of our Beloved, and this is good. Wouldn’t it be sad if we did not desire this? Thus, our challenge is to desire to experience the love of the Beloved in this life as well as the next, while at the same time completely letting go of control of making that happen and being content if we don’t experience it. Instead, we focus on walking in the Spirit, Christformation and doing God’s will. This is one of the great challenges of the Christian life. It may take an entire life to fully embrace this tension.
We should enjoy spiritual pleasure as long as God provides it, as long we as focus on God and not the pleasure. This means we do not cling to the pleasure. The spiritual hedonist focuses on their own will being done (their desire for pleasure) while mature lovers will focus on God’s will being done. In time one will usually experience more sweetness by seeking it less. (This is another example of the need for understanding phases of growth, both for ourselves and for others.)
Historically, some writers refer to our quandary of love for God as the “wound of love.” They have been drenched by God’s blissful love and so they feel an overwhelming longing to consummate their spiritual marriage with God in Christ. Yet, they cannot reach it in this life and they must travel the way of the Cross before they their love is satisfied. Thus, they journey with a wound of love. Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca. 1212 – ca. 1282) put it this way:
The loving soul betrays her true love in sighing for God.
She is sold in holy grief for his love.
She is sought with the host of many tears for her dear Lord,
Who she likes so well.
She is captured in the first experience
When God kisses her in sweet union.
She is assailed with many a holy thought
That she not waver when she mortifies her flesh.
She is bound by the power of the Holy Spirit,
And her bliss is indeed manifold.
She is slapped with the great powerlessness
Of not being able to enjoy without interruption eternal light.[1]
Mechtild of Magdeburg
Walter Hilton (d. 1396) describes its transformative power:
And this is a point of the passion of love, which by great violence and power breaks down all pleasures and delights in all earthly things; and it wounds the soul with the blissful sword of love so that the body fails and falls down and cannot bear it.[2]
In this age we learn to accept the pain of our unfulfilled longings with grace and peace. We do not anxiously seek complete bliss now, nor do we avoid the tension by quenching our desire.
[1] Mechthild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1998), 117. This work contains some of the best writing on bridal spirituality in Christian history. It is an edifying classic of Christian spirituality, even if we disagree with some of its theology.
[2] Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, N. J.: Paulist Press, 1991), 101. This is found in Book 1, Chapter 30.
