Vigils Reading
March 28
ROOTED AND GROUNDED
IN LOVE
From “Meditations and Prayers” by Evelyn Underhill
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Adoration, as it more deeply possesses us, inevitably leads on to self-
offering: for every advance in prayer is really an advance in love. “I ask not for
thy gifts but for thyself,” says the Divine Voice to Thomas à Kempis… That, of
course, is real intercession; which is gravely misunderstood by us, if we think of
it mainly in terms of asking God to grant particular needs and desires. Such
secret intercessory prayer ought to penetrate and accompany all our active
work, if it is really to be turned to the purpose of God. It is the supreme
expression of the spiritual life on earth: moving from God to man, through us,
because we have ceased to be self-centered units, but are woven into the great
fabric of praying souls, the “mystical body” through which the work of Christ on
earth goes on being done.
Those who deal much with souls soon come to know something about the
strange spiritual currents which are at work under the surface of life, and the
extent in which charity can work on supernatural levels for supernatural ends.
But if you are to do that, the one thing that matters is that you should care
supremely about it; care in fact, so much that you do not mind how much you
suffer for it. We cannot help anyone until we do care, for it is only by love that
spirit penetrates spirit.
Real saints do feel and bear the weight of the sins and pains of the world.
It is the human soul’s greatest privilege that we can thus accept redemptive
suffering for one another – and they do. St Theresa says that if anyone claiming
to be united to God is always in a state of peaceful beatitude, she simply does not
believe in their union with God. Such a union, to her mind, involves great
sorrow for the sin and pain of the world; a sense of identity not only with God
but also with all other souls, and a great longing to redeem and heal. That is real
supernatural charity.
It is a call to love and save not the nice but the nasty; not the lovable but
the unlovely, the hard, the narrow, and the embittered, and the tiresome, who
are so much worse. To love irrespective of merit or opinion or personal
preference; to love even those who offend our taste. If you are to love your
people thus, translating your love, as you must, into unremitting intercessory
work, and avoid being swamped by the great ocean of suffering, sin and need to
which you are sent, once again this will only be done by maintaining and feeding
the temper of adoration and trustful adherence. This is the heart of the life of
prayer; and only in so far as we work from this center can we safely dare to touch
other souls and seek to affect them. For such intercession is a sacrificial job; and
sacrificial jobs need the support of a stronger inner life if they are to be carried
through. They are rooted and grounded in love.