Evangelical Love

This book contains the meditations for a retreat for the renewal of vows of the consecrated lay women of the Apostles of the Interior Life, given from May 28 to June 1, 2018. The theme was "the mystery of evangelical love" or the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In these reflections, I tried to gaze upon the foundational realities of our existence-especially the truth of our belovedness in the arms of our heavenly Father-within which alone all the other elements of our life find their meaning and their place. It is my hope that what I have said may prove helpful to persons in every state of life, whether religious, priest, single, or married, opening the way to a deeper restfulness in God and a greater freedom and playfulness within his tender care.

An excerpt from the first Meditation:

In his Theology of the Body, Saint John Paul II talks about our "original experiences." These are experiences on which the rest of our lives, and all of our other experiences, are founded. We can say that they are original for two reasons: they are the first experiences of our life, and the are also foundational for all the rest of our experiences within this world. John Paul II talks about three different experiences-original solitude, original nakedness, and original unity-which we will look at in later meditations. But for now I want to look at the single, unified experience in which these are inseparable.

The whole of our life unfolds on the basis of a foundational or original experience that is common to all of us. This experience is that of being a little child held in the arms of our mother. It is the experience of being loved and held by another. We awaken to consciousness through a loving gaze, a free gift, that comes to us from the outside. In such a moment, when our mother looks upon us and smiles, we spontaneously smile back. But who has told the child to smile, who has taught her? No one-it is a deep intuition, in which she knows, without the need for words:

"You..."

"Me..."

"And the love between us."

There is a sense of being loved, of being accepted, sheltered, and cared for absolutely by another. The little child has the experience of being totally cradled in the arms of Love, which is manifest to her through the face, the eyes, the expression of her mother. Indeed, even before this the little child experiences this "shelter" in her mother's womb. Therefore we can say that, at the very first moment when we awaken to self-consciousness, to the awareness of our "I," we are aware of the "You" of another. Indeed, it is precisely through being known and loved by another that we come to the awareness of being a person. Through another's love, we experience what it means to be an individual who is always in relationship, who is loved and sustained by love at every moment.