The wound of love…

Every believer encounters it. Some call it spiritual dryness, the wilderness, or some other negative term. The saints of the Catholic Church called it, “the wound of love” and to them, though it felt negative in its out working, it was a blessed experience that established the soul in divine comforts.

All of us endeavoring to pursue our Beloved wholeheartedly and without compromise will come up against this season just like David came up against Goliath. St. John of the Cross referred to this reality as the Dark Night of the Soul, in which all previous comforts of our spirituality are driven away like the early morning fog so that perfect love can be established through the purging and refining of all fleshly hindrances. It is indeed a dark night.

But joy comes in the morning! We should rest assured when we find ourselves in this place, knowing that the author and perfecter of our faith is laboring to work in us an eternal weight of glory. Blessed are those spiritual persons when they can see the discipline of the Lord for it is nothing other than His counting us as sons and daughters. He disciplines the ones He loves. This wound of love causes us to be restless with anything that is not God. All consuming love is the object of Jesus’ labors on our behalf. Maturity is the goal and a sign of that maturity is the depth of love’s sacrificial nature.

Look at me my God, and let me know You are looking, for then I can endure anything!