Contemplating Relentless Love

A Reflection on this Friday’s Gospel (Matthew 11:16-19) – 13 December 2024

Throughout the season of Advent, the call is to stay awake! The Lord has come, is here now, and is coming again. Preparing, watching, and remaining aware are active in nature. However, sometimes all this activity must give way to contemplation. Trappist monk and priest, Thomas Keating wrote that,

Contemplative prayer is not so much the absence of thoughts as detachment from them. It is the opening of mind and heart, body and emotions—our whole being—to God…
(Keating 9)

We miss the beauty of the season if we forget to open ourselves to experience, to contemplate, God’s miraculous love. Jesus, the Word incarnate, will go to any length to fill us with His presence. His love is relentless. Advent is a perfect time to allow the Holy Spirit to come upon us and the power of the Most High to overshadow us such that we too proclaim as did the Blessed Virgin Mary, “May it be done to me according to your Word.” (Luke 1:38) God acts, we must simply be open. For our Advent to bear fruit, it is essential that we all become pregnant with Jesus. For this, we must take time away from distraction and prayerfully open ourselves through contemplative prayer.

In the Gospel today, the Lord is clearly frustrated with “this generation” and their refusal to open themselves, to be taken with the wonder and beauty of the arrival of God in their midst (Matthew 11:16). Though some may find this reading a little out of place for the Advent season, I think it’s perfect. The Lord is expressing to the people then, now, and until He comes again, the depths of God’s persistent love for us. He will play a flute to get us to dance with joy. He will sing a dirge to allow us to mourn and repent of our refusal of Love. He will do anything to open us, “our whole being— to God.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church in its first paragraph describes God’s relentless pursuit of humanity,

… at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. (CCC 1)

Fully open, contemplating God’s relentless love, we cannot help but become the conduit of His love into the world. Through us, Love pours out, Jesus comes! The season of Advent calls us to love God and cling to Him with the same passion with which He seeks and loves us. In this, we become Love in action.

Consider the story of Ruth. She devotedly clings to her mother-in-law, Naomi, despite every hardship they face. Ruth's commitment is an exemplar of relentless love. She left her all, her homeland, comfort, and family for a new life driven by love for Naomi. Ruth exemplifies the strength and courage that love can inspire in our lives.

Wherever you go I will go, wherever you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God, my God. Where you die I will die, and there be buried. May the Lord do thus to me, and more, if even death separates me from you!” (Ruth 1:16–17 NABRE)

What wouldn’t you do for love? Look to Ruth and especially to the perfect example of our Blessed Mother. In all that we are, let us cling to God as passionately as God clings to us.

Advent celebrates God’s relentless love, His willingness to go to any length to turn us from the distractions of this fallen world and become “heirs of His blessed life.” He will play the flute, so we should dance! He will sing a dirge, so we should mourn our sins and wonder at His mercy. Jesus calls you and I to wonder at God’s love and then enact that love in our lives; “Wisdom is always vindicated by her works.” (Matthew 11:19)

Take some time this Advent to contemplate God’s relentless love in all its beauty. Open yourself to that love, be pregnant with it such that it bears fruit. From Love, for Love, we are to love. In this the Lord is present.

Come Lord Jesus!

Endnotes:

Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd Ed. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000. Print.

Keating, Thomas. Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer. New York; London; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1997. Print.