March 12. 2022
The Asceticism of Love
Lord, when they speak of love, most people perhaps think of something that is always the same. Yet, how varied love is! Lord, I remember how I met you. I didn’t wory then about how to love you. Maybe because it was you who came to me, and you who took care to fill my heart. I remember virtually burning with love for you. Certaintly I felt the dragging burden of my humanity, but through your grace I understood already then a little of who I was and who you were. I understood that the flame in my heart was your gift. Then you showed me a way to find you. “Under the cross, under every cross,” you woulf tell me, “T am there. Embrace it and you will find me.” You said this to me many times. While I don’t remember your reasoning, I do know that you conviced me. As each suffering arrived, I thought of you, and with my will I said yes. The cross, however, remained: an inner darkness, a heartrending pain – how many crosses in our life!
But later on you taught me to love you in my brothers and sisters. From then on, faced with any kind of suffering, I did not stop but, accepting it, turned to the person next to me, without thinking of myself any longer. And after a while, during a moment of reflection, I would find that my sorrow had disappeared. And so it was for years and years: a continuing exercise in accepting the cross and the asceticism of love. Trials came and went. You know about them. You who count even the hairs of my head certaintly have placed those trials in your heart too. Now love is different; it is no longer only a result of willpower.
I knew that God is love. But did not magine Him quite this way.
SERVANT OF GOD CHIARA LUBICH
Chiara Lubich (+2008) was the founder and president of the Focolare movement.
