No Longer Our Own — Part II
This essay is based on the sermon preached by Mr. Steven Vanderlip for the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. For continuity we have reprinted the final paragraph of Part I.
That is the nobility of erotic love – to be caught up by another, to love with such abandon, to give oneself entirely to another in devotion. That is the sublimity shared between lovers. “In one high bound,” writes CS Lewis, “[Eros] has overleaped the massive wall of our selfhood; it has made appetite itself altruistic… and planted the interests of another in the centre of our being. Spontaneously and without effort we have fulfilled the law [to love another as oneself]” [The Four Loves, p. 130]. This is the stuff of song – if only the lover sings, then Eros gives us the Song of all Songs! The greatest song – how great it is.
Yet here, we need to be careful, not that we risk loving another too much but that Eros, in speaking “like a god” [p 124] as Lewis says, in sounding so divine, and commanding total devotion, might lead us short of love’s end. This little god of Eros might set up shop as the omnipotent, and in his service we might excuse ourselves, as all lovers tend to do, that we did even horrible things “for the sake of love”, as a man or woman may break their wedding vows for the sake of another. We are very confused about this we say things like “Love is Love”, absolutizing Eros and his commands. But there is only one who has the capacity to command the very center of our lives only one who can command the love of all thy heart, soul, and mind.
What we read in the Song of Songs can only be fulfilled in the Gospel. This morning we read that Mary Magdalene is searching (St. John 20:11ff) she is searching for him whom her soul loveth. She tells the angels she weeps because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him. And a second time, addressing the supposed gardener, she says tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Truly, I sought him whom my soul loveth, I sought him, but I found him not. Mary, of whom we learn elsewhere that she was possessed, indwelt, united to seven devils, here seeks the Lord Jesus and not for gratification or satisfaction of some itch. After all, she supposes him to be dead and what good is a dead body to her; but she seeks after Him in love because she is possessed no longer of seven devils but she is possessed by Jesus Himself, because He is the center of her life. All of the erotic love of the woman in the Song of Songs is present here. And in turn, with what must have been like the startling of birds into the skies, the very Lord whom her soul loveth calls her intimately by name, and she knows Him. Here is the man and woman of the Song of Songs. And though Jesus forbids Mary to touch him, her heart is enflamed by the promise of love, the eager expectation, the orientation around the Beloved Jesus. Mutual indwelling and union will follow upon such love, and Jesus ascends to God in order that he might bring her into God’s life, there to be united forever.
“We are then compelled to try to believe what we cannot yet feel, that God is our true Beloved.” [Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 158]. It is He who commands that we love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind; but the awful weight of that total devotion, the erotic love so sublimely sung in the Song of Songs, is in actuality a divine gift. It is by the gift of charity, the very love of God Himself, that we may entirely love the God who is Love with all our heart, soul, and mind. Eros is but a foretaste of this supernatural devotion. No doubt, we are very poor at cultivating this love and perhaps our experience is simply in the lack of such devotion. But to give the last word to Lewis “if we cannot practice the presence of God, it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawares.” [p. 160]. If we seek Him whom our soul loveth, and find him not, if it feels simply like the tomb, all is dark and unfruitful, yet we can follow St Mary to the tomb, we can follow her in expectation, and where Christ’s death is, there will be Christ’s resurrection; and we might at the last hear the Beloved call our name, and let us answer, Rabboni, which is to say, Master.