Salesian Literature

Chapter 14  :  Some other ways charity has of wounding hearts

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Nothing wounds a loving heart more than to know that, on its account, love is wounding another’s heart.  Never do we cause another heart to be wounded by loving us than straightaway we are wounded for its sake.

 

When a man realizes that love for him wounds the heart of God, he immediately receives a mutual wound in his own heart.  What a wound thou hast made, my bride, my true love, cries the heavenly lover to the Sulamite; what a wound thou hast made in this heart of mine! (Cant. 4:9).  And the Sulamite exclaims: “Tell my beloved that I pine away with love.” (Cant. 5:8)

 

Can we think of our Saviour wounded by a love for us which brought him to death, death on a cross (Phil. 2:8) – and not be wounded for his sake?  I would even go further … While we may suffer to the limits of our love, he loved beyond the limits of his suffering; if we are wounded, then, it is because our love for him can never fully answer his love for us, his death for us.

 

Another wound due to love is when the soul really feels that it is loving God, yet God treats it as though he were unaware of its love for him, or mistrustful of it.  Why then, Theotimus, the soul endures intense pangs; it cannot bear to realize, to feel, even God’s mere pretence of distrusting it.

 

Poor St. Peter knew that love for the Master filled his heart, yet our Lord feigned ignorance of it (cf. Jn. 21:15-17).  “Peter,” he said, “do you care for me more than these others?”

 

“Yes, Lord,” replied the apostle, “you know well that I love you.”

 

“But, Peter, do you really care for me?” repeated the Saviour.

 

“My dear Master,” cried the apostle, “indeed you know well that I love you.”

 

Still the good Master, to him to the test, continued to appear unconvinced of his love.  “Peter,” he asked, “do you love me?”

Dear Lord, how you are wounding that poor heart!  Peter, deeply distressed, lovingly but painfully exclaimed: “My Master, you know all things; you can tell only too well that I love you.”

 

St. Peter was convinced that our Lord, all knowing as he is, could not be ignorant of how dearly Peter loved his Master; but since the repetition of that question, Dost thou love me? seemed to imply some mistrust, Peter was deeply shaken by it.

 

Take the case of a soul who feels really resolved to die rather than offend God, yet fails to catch the slightest spark of fervour; a soul so lacking in the feeling of love that it is quite numb, so faint-hearted that its every step is a fall into evident imperfection.  That soul, I tell you, is badly wounded; its love is deeply pained at God’s pretence of being unaware that it loves him, at God’s seeming abandonment of it as though it did not belong to him.  Under all its defects, its distractions, its coldness, it fancies that our Lord is levelling this reproach against it: “How can you say you love me, when your soul is not in my care?”  The pain of this shoots, like an arrow, through the heart; but it is a pain due to love.  If the soul were not in love with God, it would not be distressed by fear of not loving him.

 

Sometimes love wounds by the mere memory of time past when we had no love for God.  “Late have I learned to love you,” cried St. Augustine[1], for thirty years a heretic; “late have I learned to love you, beauty so ancient, yet so new!”  Bygone days haunt the present with horror, when a man looks back to a past in which he knew no love for his supreme good.

 

Love even wounds us, on occasion, by the bare reflection that vast numbers of people set God’s love at naught.  It is enough to make us die of grief, as we go trough the psalmist’s experience: Stung by love’s jealousy, I watch my enemies defy thy bidding … sorrow and distress have fallen on me (Ps. 118:139).

 

St. Francis of Assisi too, one day when he thought no one was listening, burst into tears.  So bitterly did he sob and moan that some good man came running to his assistance, convinced Francis was being murdered.

 

On finding the saint alone, he asked: “Poor fellow, what are you crying like that for?”

 

“I am weeping,” came the reply, “because our Lord suffered so solely for love of us, yet no one gives it a thought.”

 

The explanation over, he took to his tears again; while the good man, in sympathy, fell to groaning and weeping too.

 

Be it as it may, however, there is this to wonder at in wounds caused by divine love: the pain is a pleasant one, as everyone who experiences it admits.  They would not exchange this pain for all the pleasures in the world.  Love knows no pain; or, if it does, it is a welcome pain.

 

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[1]  Confessions, 10.27.

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