This post is the first in Fr Philip’s reflections on Love, part of the series Faith, Hope and Love. The reflections on Love will be accompanied by images of the work of contemporary sculptors and architects who strive to express something of the mystery of this word ‘love’.
Know it well, love was his meaning.
Julian of Norwich
Thomas Merton, after 20 years as a Trappist monk made a profound observation: “My monastery…is a place in which I disappear from the world as an object of interest in order to be everywhere in it by hiddenness and compassion”.
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Only love makes sense of such a vocation, and yet it is a vocation in which all of us can share. Disappearing as an object of interest suggests I am not, nor need be, centre-stage. Being everywhere in hiddenness and compassion shifts the centre of gravity from self to grace. At the heart of this life is freedom: freedom from compulsions, attachments, addictions. And the fruit of such life is nothing less than community.
Julian of Norwich, at the end of her Revelation of Divine Love, looks back and asks the meaning of her revelations. She realized that God revealed what he did to her “because he wants to have it better known than it is”.
Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal to you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For love.
…So I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning. And I saw very certainly in this and in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting.
Julian of Norwich
Primordial words always remain like the brightly lit house which one must leave behind, “even when it is night”. They are always as though filled with the soft music of infinity. No matter what it is they speak of, they always whisper something about everything. If one tries to pace out their boundary, one almost becomes lost in the infinite. They are the children of God, who possess something of the luminous darkness of their Father.
Karl Rahner
 | Love is a primordial word – striking mysteriously and deeply into the human heart, offering us an horizon which is far reaching and extending, always speaking to us of “more” or “beyond,” a word that is never exhausted. Live with the word: let it inform your every moment: let it sink from your head into your heart. |
 | Perhaps you are worried at present, experiencing loss and grief, or illness: as you get in touch with your reality let love become its meaning. Don’t try and analyse it or work it out: simply rest in the knowledge that love is speaking directly into your condition. |
 | In all the circumstances of your life love is addressing you, wanting you to stay with it in such a way that you discover a deeper meaning, a more fulfilling challenge, a more profound realization of who you can be and become. |
The images in this post come from Tadao Ando’s Meditation Space in the UNESCO Centre in Paris.
The theme of solitude remains important … Tadao Ando calls this meditation space a refuge for the spirit, a place where you can think about your own existence, an intimate space that allows for serenity and tranquillity. The light falling from above imparts the feeling that you are alive.
To find out more about the Meditation Space visit http://www.unesco.org/artcollection/NavigationAction.do?idOeuvre=3185
For a printable PDF of the text of this meditation click on the link below.
