The School of Love, February 11

CRAVINGS

[Continued from yesterday]

...Again, the spiritual-minded man cannot but be of an ardent nature. Keen to appreciate, he is also keen to love; and, while he grows, until his love has found its final goal, he will more than once experience the disillu­sion of love that has been ill-bestowed.

He will bestow it where it is not deserved, deceived by some little outward show. He will give it and it wi11 not be returned. He will pour it out, and wi11 find that the cup that should have received it, could hold so much and no more.

And meanwhile his own heart will be growing; it will yearn for some­thing more worthy, for the best thing that may be loved; it will reach out into the infinite, both of giving and of receiving.

When it has gone thus far, when it has drunk of the best and worthiest that this life has to give, and has found it wanting, when more is not received, when the little that it had is taken away, by death, by separation, by faith­lessness, by misunderstanding, by whatever cause, when the ordinary interests of flat­tened-out life absorb its time and powers, but have no place for the affections, there grows a sense of loss, of disappointment, which the hungry victim may too often mis­take for failure.

Or thirdly, there is the result of that reaction which comes from experience; and this is of two kinds. There is the bitter dis­covery that men and things are not always the ideals that he had pictured in his mind.

This world, and every man in this world, is capable of so much, might be so much, if only - ! And the "if only" is frustrated by so many trifles, or else, apparently, by so much that God, if He would, could arrange!

Sometimes individuals will not see what is good, sometimes seeing they will not follow; sometimes a good thing, to us so clear, is contested, opposed, thwarted by others, apparently no less eager than ourselves in the service of God; sometimes it is circum­stances that hinder any possibility of action; sometimes it is those in authority who seem to hinder. Sometimes there is actual scan­dal and corruption where nothing but zeal and sacrifice should reign.

In a thousand ways we "live and learn"; and it needs a patient and a persevering heart to endure loyal under the process. It begins to suspect its own cravings; perhaps it begins to resign itself to a lower satisfaction.

The second kind is the experience of our­selves. From time to time in our lives the supernatural gains a strong hold upon us. There are periods, longer or shorter, for which we can account or cannot, when we seem to awaken to a new revelation; when we see things we never saw before, when prayer becomes on a sudden a new light, at once satisfying and easy, when effort after nobler life is full of inspiration, when we scarcely touch the ground beneath us on our way to God, when we tell ourselves, with some enthusiasm, that now "we have found Him whom our soul loveth, we have held Him and will not let Him go"; that hence­forth" nothing shall separate us from the love which we have in Christ Jesus Our Lord."

Then on a sudden, or perhaps it may be gradually, all this passes away. The revelation grows dim in the distance, remaining as a recollection and no more; prayer becomes again the humdrum affair it was of old, if it does not sink even lower; effort becomes impossible, progress is none, the burden of this life and its myriad tempta­tions presses on us, we walk with leaden shackles on our feet....
[continued tomorrow]
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918