The Wound of Divine Love

A popular Jesuit priest–writer, appreciated by secular pundits for his congenial urbanity and wit, recently wrote an essay addressing the struggle of some priests with the addiction to pornography. Specifically, the author argued that celibate men are no more vulnerable to pornography than non–celibate men would be. On this point, I do not disagree with the author. Much of what the author writes is well–reasoned and defensible. In vain, however, did I search the essay looking for the name of Jesus Christ, for an allusion to grace, and for so much as a mention of the yearning of every soul for divine intimacy. While admitting that celibacy is, as he puts it, “a complex topic”, the author defines it as “a different way of loving people”.

Celibacy of the sort that the Church calls consecrated, be it that of the priest, the monk, the friar, or even of the Jesuit, is characterised by its verticality. It is not primarily horizontal. It is not, first of all, “a different way of loving people”.

There are some eunuchs, who were so born from the mother’s womb, some were made so by men, and some have made themselves so for love of the kingdom of heaven; take this in, you whose hearts are large enough for it. (Matthew 19:12)

Consecrated celibacy—that of a man as fully and as deeply as that of a woman—is a spousal response to the Word of God. Prompted by grace and sustained by grace, consecrated celibacy is a relationship sealed afresh, again and again, in the mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ, offered in sacrifice and received in communion. The celibate man lives with a gaping hole in his heart; he bears within himself an emptiness that nothing, save the love of Christ, can fill full and satisfy.

Yet ever thou art at my side, ever holdest me by my right hand. Thine to guide me with thy counsel, thine to welcome me into glory at last. What else does heaven hold for me, but thyself? What charm for me has earth, here at thy side? What though flesh of mine, heart of mine, should waste away? Still God will be my heart’s stronghold, eternally my inheritance. Lost those others may be, who desert thy cause, lost are all those who break their troth with thee; I know no other content but clinging to God. (Psalm 72:23–28)

The celibate’s solitary clinging to God is mysteriously fruitful. It makes a father of the unwed man, a mother of the unwed woman. It renders one capable of sacrificial love and of friendships that, while marked by the passage of time, and saddened by the separation of death, continue to bear fruit in eternity.  If this is what the author means by a “different way of loving people”, then it is a way that I pray God to grant me here and hereafter. I am reminded of Saint Bernard’s lament over the death of Gerard, his brother. Adressing his monks, the abbot of Clairvaux says:

You are aware that a loyal companion has left me alone on the pathway of life: he who was so alert to my needs, so enterprising at work, so agreeable in his ways.  Who was ever so necessary to me?  Who ever loved me as he?  My brother by blood, but bound to me more intimately by religious profession.  Share my mourning with me, you who know these things.  I was frail in body and he sustained me, faint of heart and he gave me courage, slothful and negligent and he spurred me on, forgetful and improvident and he gave me timely warning.  Why has he been torn from me?  Why snatched from my embraces, a man of one mind with me, a man according to my heart?

Saint Thérèse, no stranger to human affections, wrote to the Abbé Maurice Bellière, a priest for whom she prayed as for a brother:

I promise to have you taste after my departure for eternal life the happiness one can find in feeling a friendly soul next to oneself. It will not be this cor­respondence, more or less distant, always very incomplete, which you seem to long for, but it will be a fraternal conversation that will charm the angels, a conversation that creatures will be unable to reproach since it will be hidden from them.

Celibacy is, then, as the priest–writer says, “a different way of loving people” but, before it can be this, it is the wound of divine love familiar to Saint John the Apostle, to Saint Bernard, Saint John of the Cross, and a vast number of other saints who, having encountered the gaze of Christ, received the grace to prefer His Face to every other face, His Heart to every other heart, His presence to every other presence and, in so doing, “ran in the way of God’s commandments with hearts enlarged and unspeakable sweetness of love” (Prologue, Rule of Saint Benedict).