CONTINGENT GRACE

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.
(T.S. Elliot, Choruses from the Rock)

Pain is the kiss of love.
Love offers the highest ideal yet also lacerates the deepest wound. Thus, Yeats diagnosed love as "the crooked thing. There is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it." (Brown Penny) Enraptured, the heart follows its own rhythm, at times overwhelming emotion and logic. Its ultimate goal: fulfillment. Restless by nature, the heart looks beyond itself to the other as the locus of its fullness in the affirmation of its existence, in the revelation of its meaning and reason for living. Pope John Paul II identified this restlessness as the lifeblood of that which is most deeply human: “the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience.” (Redemptor Hominis, 18) This pilgrimage to meaning is deeply rooted, inflamed by an innate affection for this 'other' to which I long to offer my life, time, treasures and talents. Some can choose to understand this as humans being innately selfish, desiring only their own self-realization. There is accuracy in this because humans begin with themselves. Where else can I begin other than myself, introspectively delving into my being, questioning my life and the meaning of my existence? In fact, isn't the best gift that which comes from the depths of the heart?
Love is more than a happy, romantic feeling. Its voice speaks to the deepest self, offering it the drive to look for purpose and beauty. As a man attracted to the same sex within a context where most of my male peers are attracted to the opposite, I felt the searing sting of unsatisfied desire. I went through times when I was caught up in love's dangerous embrace, simply to be teased by unfulfilled affection. I was so drawn that I preoccupied myself with everything that this collective 'he' did. I treasured every part of the little insignificant things that made our relationship, got raptured into pure bliss at every attention received from him and sank into deep despair when felt ignored or rejected. I recklessly delved into conjugal acts that only left me more empty and yearning.
The Song of Songs well worded the condition of my heart: "I sought him but I did not find him; I called to him but he did not answer me" (5:6). I was ushered into the dark side of love, to its night. Love has its nights as much as it has its days, its winter as much as it has summers and both have much to teach. The midnight of love, beyond infatuation and lust, is a refining fire burning away the impurities to have only pure gold, a pure, real and most authentic self. It is easy to run away from this, it is easy to fill the hole, to run to someone else just to avoid feeling lonely, feeling alone, feeling rejected and unwanted.
Then a voice within, with a forceful tenderness of a mother, asked, "What would happen if you allowed the pain to speak to you, if you stayed with the loneliness, the rejection and the abandonment?" It would be like Alice falling into the rabbit hole and continually being asked, "Who are you?" with the only answer being apophatic: "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid... because I'm not myself, you see. I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly... for I can't understand it myself to begin with." It is ultimately, in the words of Luigi Giussani, "the thirst for change in one's life and the desire for one's life to be coherent, that it may be changed on the strength of what it is at its root, that it may be more worthy of the Reality that "clothes" it." (From Utopia to Presence)
Passing through this valley of tears, what I thought made me ME was scrutinized. It returned me again to the beginning, to the question of existence and meaning, down a vertiginous quest that drove me to the limits of my understanding of myself and the world, almost to a point of sheer madness. Love pushed me to the peripheries of my world of comfort and plunged me into a realm beyond myself. Love transcended my humanity, my world, even humanity itself. The affection for love, in its very nature, carried me beyond the human and into the arms of this total 'Other' who dares to call himself LOVE, to this 'Other' whose face is one yet three: Love given, received and shared. It is the journey of the soul to its meaning, to its destiny. So why did I stay? Why take the red pill and dare jump into the rabbit hole of love? What was at stake was my very life.
In the words of Morpheus,
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.

Did not Dante pen a similar experience?

MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say,
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.

So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.

The forest of the dark night is deep. In this ascent, I am confronted with my own finitude, humbled by my own littleness in the face of Mystery in its totality. I cannot reach it unless it reveals itself to me, unless it makes itself accessible to my embodied existence. Is this not what makes love authentic? That it is seen, touched, heard, even tasted? Regardless of its infinite nature, Love desires to be made known through the body. Can love really be expressed outside of the body when this is our sole means of communication, or to better articulate it, that the body is the sole medium for our gift and reception of love?
Trinity and Incarnation. In my own meandering experience, this is the face of love revealed to me: Love whose nature is a unity of Persons who reaches out to me in embodied form.
The journey is far from over. It has just begun. Along this road, two lamps are my guide: The reality of my experience and the conviction of my faith. Experience and faith continually question each other, often in a dissonant dialogue. Experience prevents faith from becoming an ideology and faith prevents experience from superficiality. In the words of Tennyson: "All experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! (Ulysses)
In this invitation to depth and height, searching leads to surrender: "This passion is the opposite of moralism because it is not a law to which we must conform but a love to be ever more adhered to, it is a presence for us to follow ever more with our whole selves, it is a fact within which we can really abandon ourselves." (Giussani, From Utopia to Presence)
It is the sign of contradiction: My Redemption came through suffering, light travelled through night, chastity has dignified my sexuality. The end is the beginning, eternity has embraced time, grace has built on nature, deep has called on deep and the Beloved rests its head on the bossom of his Lover.

The fire of the wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction.
You fool, it is life that makes you dance: Have you forgotten? Come out of the smoke, the world is tossing in its sleep, the sun is up, the land is bursting in the silence of dawn.
You fool, the prisons are open!
(Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable)