{"id":23038,"date":"2023-10-23T10:52:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T14:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23038"},"modified":"2023-10-23T11:23:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T15:23:04","slug":"23038","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23038","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/Sc6SSHuZvQE?si=FrYZdZeTVlJI2DgY\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Reckless Love (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Sc6SSHuZvQE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">God\u2019s Passionate Love<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard writes about God\u2019s desire for loving intimacy with us:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saint Bonaventure taught that we are each \u201cloved by God in a particular and incomparable manner, as in the case of a bride and groom.\u201d [1] Francis and Clare of Assisi knew that the love God has for each soul is unique and made to order, which is why <strong>any \u201csaved\u201d person feels beloved, chosen, and even \u201cGod\u2019s favorite.<\/strong>\u201d Many people in the Bible also knew and experienced this specialness. <strong>Divine intimacy is always and precisely particular and made to order\u2014and thus \u201cintimate.\u201d [2]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The inner knowledge of God\u2019s love is itself the Indwelling Presence, and it is also described as joy (John 15:11). Which comes first? Does feeling safe and held by God allow us to deal with others in the same way? Or does human tenderness allow us to imagine that God must be the same, but infinitely so?<strong> I do not suppose it really matters where we start; the important thing is that we get in on the big secret from one side or the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, \u201csecret,\u201d or even \u201chidden secret,\u201d is what writers like David (Psalm 25:14), Paul, Rumi, Hafiz, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and many mystics called it. And for some sad reason, it<strong> seems to be a well-kept secret. Jesus praises God for \u201chiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them only to the little ones\u201d <\/strong>(Matthew 11:25). Well, what is it that the learned and the clever often cannot see?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. Once we experience such intimacy, only the intimate language of lovers describes the experience for us: mystery, tenderness, singularity, specialness, changing the rules \u201cfor me,\u201d nakedness, risk, ecstasy, incessant longing, and also, of course, necessary suffering. <\/strong>This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints. [3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (c. 1207\u2013c. 1282) wrote about her experience of God\u2019s passionate love and desire. She records a dialogue between her soul and God:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The soul begins:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ah, Lord, love me passionately, love me often, love me long. For the more continuously You love me, the purer I will be; the more fervently You love me, the more beautiful I will be; the longer You love me, the holier I will become here on earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>God responds:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because I Myself am Love, I will love you continuously.<br>Because I long to be loved passionately, My desire is to love you fervently.<br>Because I am everlasting and eternal, I will love you long\u2026. [4]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I shine, you will reflect my radiance,<br>When I flow, you will flow swiftly,<br>When you breathe, you draw into yourself My Divine Heart.<br>When you cry for Me, I take you into My arms.<br>When you love Me, we are united as one.<br>Nothing can separate us, for we abide together joyfully. [5]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">God Is Hopelessly in Love<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>In season eight of&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-vdrtdo-tlkrdrec-y\/\">Turning to the Mystics<\/a><em>, James Finley points to the guidance Mechthild of Magdeburg offers to people in relationship with God:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We turn to the guidance that Mechthild of Magdeburg offers in&nbsp;<em>The Flowing Light of the Godhead<\/em>. Through what we know about her life, she\u2019s mentoring us and modeling for us this Christlike life. Mystics such as Teresa of \u00c1vila, John of the Cross, and the author of the&nbsp;<em>Cloud of Unknowing<\/em>&nbsp;all share their way as mystically awakened Christians. They try to offer guidance to help us discern our awakening, with instructions such as how to recognize our awakening starting, how to conduct ourselves, and so on. Mechthild doesn\u2019t do that\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mechthild shares this deepening love between herself and God, but <strong>she doesn\u2019t share it by talking\u00a0<em>about it<\/em>. <\/strong>She lets us in on it with the language of intimacy and bears witness to it. As we read her book, insofar as we\u2019re touched by the beauty of what she\u2019s saying about the deepening of this love, we\u2019re being guided by her. The <strong>very fact that we\u2019re touched by it and its beauty reveals that we\u2019re also being drawn into this love\u2014or we wouldn\u2019t be touched by it. That\u2019s how she guides us. That\u2019s the intimacy of her teaching.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Finley describes how we might connect with Mechthild\u2019s emphasis on love:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In a way, Mechthild is playing a violin with just one string on it, which is love. But the more we listen to it, it\u2019s the beauty of the whole orchestra. It\u2019s the beauty that permeates the reverberations of all the various aspects of this. Even though she just stays on point, never leaving this love, she makes stunning statements about love. We wonder,\u00a0<em>\u201cWhere did that come from, seriously?\u201d<\/em><strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>When we sit with her, we learn these endless variations are unfolding in us. It\u2019s endlessly evocative and she helps us to be sensitized to surrendering ourselves over to that flow of love\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>God says to her that he\u2019s so freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with her, that he quite honestly doesn\u2019t know if he could handle being God without her. <\/strong>And she says back to God, \u201cTake me home with you. I\u2019ll be your physician forever!\u201d [1] The power of these words is that,<strong> as we\u2019re reading them, we know they are true of us. We know that God has freely chosen to be so hopelessly in love with us, and that God doesn\u2019t know if God can handle being God without us in our brokenness\u2026. It circulates back around, and we give back to God the gift that God longs for, which is us!&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To sit with Mechthild and <strong>to read her is to be taken by the beauty of what she says. It is to sit in silence and ask God to deepen our capacity to realize how the love of which she speaks is already unfolding within us, and how to be faithful to that, and to carry it through the day.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-9-500x475.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-23044\" width=\"823\" height=\"782\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-9-500x475.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-9-300x285.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-9-768x730.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/image-9.png 1042w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 823px) 100vw, 823px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/Sc6SSHuZvQE?si=FrYZdZeTVlJI2DgY God\u2019s Passionate Love Father Richard writes about God\u2019s desire for loving intimacy with us: Saint Bonaventure taught that we are each \u201cloved by God in a particular and incomparable manner, as in the case of a bride and groom.\u201d [1] Francis and Clare of Assisi knew that the love God has for each soul [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23038"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23046,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23038\/revisions\/23046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}