Passionate love

Some of us are afraid to love: to open our hearts, to expose our vulnerability, to be emotionally dependent, to have a deep and aching need for a particular person.
 
That is the way many of us are when it comes to God. We like God. We say we love Him. We feel good feelings about God, but deep down we are afraid of going emotionally overboard, even for God.
 
The writings of the saints speak eloquently and explicitly about this kind of intensely deep love for God, going all the way back to the Song of Songs and continuing in the writings of St. Theresa of Avila and so many others. The Song of Songs itself takes the form of a collection of wedding songs, but holy people throughout the ages have recognized it as a magnificent expression of the passionate love between God and His people, between Christ and His Church, and even between the Lord and the individual soul.
 
This is the kind of love each of us is called to have with the Lord: to feel a deep and aching need for God even when we lie down to sleep, to seek Him and Him alone everywhere we go and in everything we do, to talk about Him longingly with those we meet, to hold fast to Him in the innermost depths of our being, to cling to Him forever and feel His wonderful, passionate love for us.

In the quiet of our prayers and always, let us open ourselves up and really love the Lord.