Father Richard Rohr recalls how he first fell in love with Scripture and devoted himself to its study:
I was in my first year of seminary when I fell in love with Scripture. I really did. To me, it was God’s self-disclosure of love for us. To be honest, I think my little mind was looking for validation for what I already believed to be true. Early experiences of God’s love and goodness shaped my intuitions before I encountered any formal theology. I devoured Scripture and systematic theology because they gave me the tools for understanding and validating my own experiences and intuitions. Now I knew they were not just my ideas.
During the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Bible opened up for me even further. The Council said that divine revelation was not God disclosing ideas about God but actually God disclosing Godself. Scripture, and even religion itself, became not mere doctrines or moralisms for me, but love-making, an actual mutual exchange of being and intimacy. It seemed like Scripture was one revelation after another of a loving God and a benevolent universe.
I remember finding certain passages that would send me into ecstasy for days. For example in 2 Samuel 7, David tells God that he’s going to build God a house, and God turns it around and says, “David, you don’t need to build me a house; I am going to build you a house!” I lived on that particular story, because for me, it was the theme of grace solidified. Now all these years later, I feel like here it is embodied in my own life. It was all true! All I had to do was be open and give my little “yes” to being used by God.
Reading the Bible, we can recognize how true it is that only those who know their need for the Beloved know how to receive the gift of the Beloved without misusing such love. A mutually admitted emptiness is the ultimate safety net for all love, and in the Scriptures, even God is presented as somehow “needing” us, and even “jealous” for our love (Exodus 20:5; 34:14). Basically, love works only inside humility. My father, Saint Francis, fell in love with the “humility” of God, as exemplified through Jesus, a word that most of us would not even think could apply to God.
Fullness or complete self-satisfaction in a person cannot permit love because there are no openings, no give-and-take, and no deep hunger. It is like trying to attach two inflated balloons to one another. Human vulnerability gives the soul an immense head start on its travels—maybe the only start for any true spiritual journey. Thus, the Risen Christ starts us off by revealing the human wounds of God, God’s solidarity with human suffering. God begins with self-disclosure from the divine side, which ideally leads to self-disclosure from our side.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 76–77.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. Just like the glasses we use to adjust our vision, love is a lens through which to understand and interpret scripture more deeply.
Story from Our Community:
When I considered that the phrase “God is Love” is reversible to “Love is God,” I saw the light. The name “God” immediately conjures up the idea of a person or something beyond understanding. However, Love is here, now, accessible, and within every human. Preaching God is an obstacle for many while preaching Love has no obstacle.
— Peter N.
