Love Alone

St. Theresa is a classic example of contemplative Christian experience. Her faith was not an abstract objective notion, but a fundamental concrete intuition directly apprehended from her life in the world. What others believed, she experienced. While deeply appreciative for her Camelite charism, her transformative contemplative life was possible only because she was empty of herself.

Self-emptiness is what was referred to by the early Christians as purity of heart. Purity of heart is always a gift. It is directly infused from God. It is never something earned because of what one does or accomplishes, and definitely not because of what one believes or thinks or is convinced of. Certain practises may prepare one for such awareness, but more likely they are ways to abide the in-between time. These practises can never force God’s indwelling, and in the end there is no actual one-to-one correlation between the two. Passive contemplative experience is a direct communication by God, generated by God, and by God alone. St. Anthony the Great noted this when he said that, [p]ure prayer is that in which a person is no longer aware of themselves, or of the fact that they are even praying.

In every sense it is useless to try and purify the self, or even for the self to try and create a place in it for God. The innocence that correlates with emptiness, and in which this communion takes place, is nothing other than a work of God, free and unpredictable and the outworking of love alone...God’s love itself, and God’s love that God has planted in us for God, for others, for the world, and for ourselves.

Many work heartily to enter into this paradise, but without love they will remain at an impasse created by reasoned approaches. It is a serious error to think that one may hoist themselves up on their own into a state of innocence and gauge what God owes them by the degree of success of their ascetic practises.

Love and love alone makes all things possible.