“How deep and burning is love!”

How deep and burning is love! The awe-inspiring Father to whom are due all glory and honor and everlasting praise, can be received in our hearts in the Beloved. This is the mystery of the Beloved and his awesome sublimity. The title carries with it the fear of the Father—“Beloved of the Father.” The title “Beloved” is a door open to the fullness of God. If we go through it with our love, he will come to us with the Father in all his love. So, it is that the divinity works with humankind by coming to visit, or rather to make a dwelling: “We will come to him and make our home with him.” But we must not take lightly the coming of the Beloved Son with the Father, for it means that we have reached the depths of his love, and the depths of his love were revealed to us in his death. So, it is love on a cross. This is how Christ spoke truly when he said, “He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:38). And so, the door to Christ and the Father is open, and the door is love on a cross. In order that we may be worthy of Christ and the Father, we must keep love and its cross in balance.

If the Beloved enters the heart, he makes it a home for himself and the Father. It is no longer a human heart, but a temple in which God dwells. O Son of God, what is left for me? Come and let the fire of your love consume me. What use is my existence? Your life swallows up my death, and so I live, “not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). O Paul, who brought yourself to death so that you might gain the life of Christ in you, in life and in death you gained them both.

Fr Matthew the Poor