Opening . . . to the 'On High'

The link between love and grief in the thought of St. Paul of the Cross indicates that love is inherently self-sacrificial.  Love is more than desire, it is desire for the other and the other's good, which is not necessarily my own.  I am inherently attached to my own good, but in love  I will to give it up, in openness to my beloved's good, as I know it.

This openness to the other is, according to Edith Stein, how we find freedom to be who we are made to be.  For the active agent in opening us is Divine Love, who offers Life through the circumstances of life. This is also the theme of the Communion and Liberation's current readings.

In an article in the current issue of Logos, "Vocation of Becoming in the Work of Edith Stein," Donald Wallenfang explains this "being open" as the"open door" to freedom and to finding Christ.  ("Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." Rv.3:20.)

It is in the circumstances of life that we find this open door to Christ.   CL: "Circumstances are given to us in order to reawaken this self-awareness, . . because circumstances help us to discover carnallly, experientially, what Christ means and what the fact that I exist means. . . . Thus we must not be afraid of what God asks of us through life's circumstances." "Life as Vocation," p. x

Our job as humans, according to Stein, is to remain open to the working of God's plan through us.  God's grace is shared in the circumstances of life and we need to remain open to receive it.  Mary's Fiat, her "Be it done unto me according to Thy word," is the model of free response.  As Wallenfang explains, "[A]uthentic human personhood is realized in and through the opening to another -- the letting of another's being come over oneself." (p.67)  God takes the initiative, and awakening to it is the human spirit's fundamental realization of freedom.  As Stein says (p. 66):

Once awakened, once having his original freedom and openness, it is up to him to keep himself free and open.  At the same time, it is possible for him to lose both. If he does not 'keep himself on high,' he can fall back into the being of nature from which he has awakened to personally spiritual being.  A specific action of the will is by no means the only way to 'keep himself on high.'  The person 'keeps himself' on the higher level -- by his own power and by what he is open to -- to a large extent by merely 'letting it happen,' by not deliberately stopping it, and to this extent it is voluntary.  Only when his power fails, possibly when a strong pull from below leads it down into an activity of nature withdrawing it from higher activity, need he deliberately withstand the pull and keep himself on the higher level . . . [A life of grace] is possible simply because of his original openness, and it may come to his share by his merely 'allowing' it, indeed even if he does not actively allow it but just fails to resist it.

The other image Wallenfang uses is "the way of the cross." He writes, "Is this way of life [the opening to another -- a letting of another's being come over oneself] not precisely the "way of the cross"?  Wallenfang continues:

Stein writes: "For Christ accomplished his greatest work, the reconciliation and union of mankind with God, in the utmost humiliation and annihilation on the Cross.  When the soul realizes this it will begin to understand that it, too, must be led to union with God through annihilation, a 'living crucifixion, in the sensual as well as in the spiritual part.' As, in the desolation of his death, Jesus surrendered himself into the hands of the invisible and incomprehensible God, so the soul must enter the midnight darkness of faith, which is the only way to this God."

Insofar as one surrenders oneself to the dark night of the paradoxical phenomenon of the Cross, one opens to the unfolding movement of God's grace through a responsive fiat that simply "lets it happen."  Just as human beings retain the possibility of opening to one another to realize their full created and creative potential, so do human beings retain the possibility of opening to God, who transgresses the limits of created finitude, inviting mortal creatures to partake of immortality, of life eternal -- actuality eternal, fullness of being, fullness of life: "Openness is the 'open gate that God's spirit can freely pass through."  Thus, for Stein, the response and disposition of openness is that which allows a personal creature to become its fully actualized self -- realizing its maximum potential.  The vision of the fully actualized self attests to an eschatalogical rendezvous between the host of personal spiritual beings and the eternal Triad of love: an eternal communal life wherein every personal soul who opens to Divine life "is to be inserted as a flower in an eternally imperishable wreath."

Nothing more need be said.  Lord, you made Edith Stein a beautiful flower in your eternal wreath.  Make me one too!