Summer rest and ordinary time offer us an excellent opportunity to prepare the ground for the spiritual life; to sow, love, harvest and pamper our relationship with the Beloved, to live in fullness.
The beautiful book of the Song of Songs is an allegory, a continuous metaphor, of sublime depth and sensitivity, so much so that it inspired St. John of the Cross in his work Spiritual Canticle. That pure and torn love, so poetically illustrated in the Song, can be a good inspiration to begin the course spiritually speaking.
“I was looking for the love of my soul. I was looking for him and I couldn’t find him”.
The necessary attitude for every beginning, also for the “beginning again” is the search. The inspired verses of the Song reflect, from the appearance of an earthly love between a man and a woman, the love that throbs between God and the Church. “I will arise and go about the city, through the streets and squares, I will seek the love of my soul”. And the search requires an activation, for the joyful encounter, it is necessary to set out.
The action of searching connects with Abraham’s “leaving your land”. With what in psychology and training today is called “leaving the comfort zone”. It is necessary to break with inertias and routines. And move into the unknown. In the spiritual life, to find ourselves one more year, one more liturgical cycle, in the same point means, more than stagnation, regression. The soul must seek contact with the Beloved, contact with Jesus.
Following the logic of the Song of Songs, it is necessary to leave the city behind: “the watchmen met me, as they watch over the city”. The spiritual encounter requires crossing borders, the gates of our city: “as soon as I had passed them, I found the love of my soul”. And the longed-for encounter entails an embrace, an embrace with the God of life. Once you have him, you cannot let go: “I embraced him and did not let go until I brought him into my house”.
Because the Christian’s life is always a journey. A movement. An action.
In the Song of Songs, love leads us to go beyond the gates and frontiers, outside the city, while for St. Teresa of Jesus, the path is to the interior, passing through the different dwellings, until reaching the last one, the soul itself, in the encounter with the beloved. Also, in the thought of St. Augustine, “the truth dwells within you”. These are not different paths, but different explanations of the same journey, that of Faith.
“I am for my beloved, and my beloved is for me.” Once we have embarked on the journey, and overcome our limited reality, love intoxicates everything. Life is for the Lord, because the Lord fills everything. Indeed, faith fills all our needs and fills all our gaps. We need nothing more. This sufficiency, proper to complete love, is a sign of happiness. And it points us to a clue: satisfaction does not depend on having many things. It is related to detachment from material things. And with optimism.
Yes, optimism. Because the positive attitude towards life, in general, is a characteristic of the Christian, and a sign of true Resurrection. The idea is that our state of happiness is so great, our spiritual fullness is so powerful, that the negative elements are something incidental, that we can easily relativize. Authentic love brings us to this state of optimism.
Why do we experience episodes of pessimism? Because our faith and hope are clouded in the face of daily events that cause us rejection. But our angers should be a wake-up call that our first love, our vital infatuation, our faith, are wounded. They are signs that we need to return to authentic, stark prayer. In absolute trust in the One who can do all things.
The love that enraptures, which the reading of the Song of Songs offers us, is an integral love that transforms everything.
We propose the exercise of returning to the reading of its beautiful pages, especially when we feel uneasy and discomfort, to calibrate the love in our lives. To love in fullness leads to happiness, so that situations that lead us to sadness, even if it is temporary, must be passed through the filter of the heart. The strategy is to return to the “Song”, as we do to the “Hymn to Charity”.
Search and find. To go beyond the city gates and go beyond our comfort zone. To set out and travel. To go into the last dwelling place and to live reciprocal and full love. All these attitudes are proper to beginnings and “recommencements”. Ordinary time in the liturgy is a propitious time for sowing; the time of harvesting will come later. Therefore, let us sow seeds of love, with others, but also in the field of our spiritual life. Let us take care, let us pamper our relationship with the Beloved.