What is holy love? Is it possible to be a true lover of God? Let’s meditate on this through the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John story of the woman at the well and also His words to Thomas a Kempis, a monk from the Middle Ages. Kempis kept a prayer journal entitled, “The Imitation of Christ”. Today’s mental prayer meditation on holy love and what a true lover of God looks like uses both the passage in Chapter 6 of Book 3 from “Imitation of Christ” and the passage from holy scripture found in John chapter 4 about the Samaritan woman at the well.
If you want to learn more about mental prayer, click the link above for a description on how to pray to God using the tips provided in our the mental prayer description page.
Let us begin by putting ourselves in the presence of God.
Prayers before the Daily Meditation
Prayer to Jesus
I believe, Jesus, that you are really here and present to me. I recognize my nothingness and I humbly bring myself into your presence, knowing that if You will it, You can give me the graces I need to grow in faith and adoration for you. Look into my soul and see the condition of it. Please listen to my pleas for help. You are my God and I humbly give you praise and adoration as my Lord and my Master. I submit to your absolute authority in my life. Please, Lord, look on me with eyes of mercy and see all the areas of my life that are in most need of your grace. I am unworthy to be in your presence because I am a sinner and I have offended you so many times with my pride and indifference. I have many defects that I have been too weak to correct and I am deeply ashamed of them. I want to be rid of this guilt and I want my conscience freed from it. I beg you to not look at my faults but look at me with pity and pardon me of my sins. I beg you for the grace to overcome them once and for all. I know that with your grace I will be able to stop the sin and to amend my life so that I may one day merit to see You face to face. Please purify my heart and my lips, my mind and my body. Amen.
The Confiteor Prayer
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
Prayer to the Eternal Father
Heavenly Father, I do not deserve that you should pay attention to me but by the merits of Jesus Christ, your Son, and my Redeemer, you have promised you will not reject my prayers. Jesus offers to You His homage, pleading to You for my soul through His past labors, through His Word, and through His Heart. It is by His tears and through His Most Precious Blood that I am able to pray to You. He adores You, and thanks You, and begs You for mercy on me and on the whole world. He begs You for graces to give me from Your eternal fruitfulness. Eternal Father, whatever Jesus says to You on my behalf, I say the same. I make all His homage to You my own and I join Him in His intention. I only dare to present myself before You by invoking His holy name and through His merits. It is by His death and resurrection that I can come before You with confidence that You will hear me. Amen.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Most Holy Spirit, My Paraclete, I am not capable without your inspiration to have a single good thought. I cannot even concentrate my thoughts without You helping me to control them. I cannot even raise my heart to You unless You attract it toward You. I cannot even love You unless You first put the love in my heart to give. I cannot even form a good resolution unless You convict my heart of the need for it. And I will never succeed unless You help me put it into practice by your grace. Every good thing I have You have given to me. Every spiritual grace I have received You have given to me without merit. Since I recognize your omnipotence and my nothingness I renounce right now in this moment all my own thoughts, which are not capable of guiding me toward eternal life. I recognize that I know nothing about what is necessary for my own salvation and that I am reliant completely on You for all grace. I am painfully aware that my own affections lead me toward evil and that they cannot be trusted. Please come, Holy Spirit, fill me with your presence. I abandon myself to You in order that You may guide me and illuminate my heart and mind. Help me pray my mental prayer well and to be committed to this every day. Help me grow in love for You and in virtue so that I may overcome the sins that afflict me right now. Inflame my heart and convert my will. I beg You to give me a heart that desires your holy will for my life and not my own selfish will. Amen.
What is Holy Love, My Lord?
Can I become a True Lover of God?
Let us journey to Jacob’s Well on a scorching hot day to meet Our Lord and contemplate His holy love and what it means to be a true lover of God.
MAKE A MOVIE IN YOUR MIND:
I arrive before the Lord, not expecting to meet Him because I am coming alone at a time when others are avoiding the noonday heat. I do this because I am ashamed of my sin, some of which is public and known to all in my community and some is so shameful it is a deep secret from all. I know I am not a true lover of God. There are things I keep and do not surrender.
But here I am, arriving to the well to draw more water to carry to keep me alive in this desert heat. I look up from a distance and to my surprise I see the silhouette of a man there. He is looking my way, although I don’t see His eyes clearly yet. He is seemingly waiting for me to arrive.
He looks at me with holy love, and has authority in His voice when He greets me. But what pierces my soul and fills me with joy is the discovery that He knows. He knows the deep shame in my soul, those secret sins I carry, my heavy buckets of water in the desert, the ones I lift over my shoulders each day. My burden is heavy, and He knows it. He knows I am not yet of a true lover of God.
Still, He looks at me with a loving gaze, despite all that I have done that has made me completely unworthy of this holy love. Even though I am not a true lover of His.
Jesus, the more I come to know You, the more I see that my love for you is lacking. I am not a true lover. I don’t give You all of me.
What is holy love, my Lord? How can I love you with a more devout holy love? I see the way with which You love and I recognize I am incapable of it myself. I’m not a true lover.
MEDITATE ON HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Let us read the following passage. Allow Jesus to speak to you in this moment. Put yourself in the Samaritan woman’s shoes. Listen to what Jesus tells her, and meditate on what He is telling you as you read the words of holy scripture and ponder what it means to have holy love and be a true lover of God:
Holy Love is Living Water
So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there. Jesus, tired from his journey, sat down there at the well. It was about noon. A woman of Samaria came to draw water.
Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.
The Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
[The woman] said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the well is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?”
Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come back.”
The woman answered and said to him, “I do not have a husband.”
Jesus answered her, “You are right in saying, ‘I do not have a husband.’ For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
The woman said to him, “Sir, I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain; but you people say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
What is Holy Love When Love becomes Hard?
The True Lover Stays the Course
I choose You, Jesus. I let go of the burdens of carrying all the water. I give you consent to direct the path of my life.
But, Jesus…
Sometimes I feel that You are not always there at the Well with an abundance of water for me. Sometimes I feel that You have hidden yourself and I must suffer through long periods of silence before You will speak to me words of holy love.
Why, Jesus? Why do you do this?
The Proving of a True Lover from The Imitation of Christ, Book III, Chapter 6
What is Holy Love for God?
A Meditation from Thomas a Kempis
The voice of Christ speaks to his disciple: “My child, you are not yet a brave and wise lover.”
His disciple replies, “Why, Lord?”
The voice of Christ responds to His disciple, “Because, on account of a slight difficulty you give up what you have undertaken and are too eager to seek consolation. The brave lover stands firm in temptations and pays no heed to the crafty persuasions of the enemy. As I please him in prosperity, so in adversity I am not displeasing to him.
The wise lover regards not so much the gift of Him Who loves as the love of Him Who gives. He regards the affection of the Giver rather than the value of the gift, and sets his Beloved above all gifts. The noble lover does not rest in the gift but in Me Who am above every gift.
All is not lost, then, if you sometimes feel less devout than you wish toward Me or My saints. That good and sweet feeling which you sometimes have is the effect of present grace and a certain foretaste of your heavenly home. You must not lean upon it too much, because it comes and goes. But to fight against evil thoughts which attack you is a sign of virtue and great merit. Do not, therefore, let strange fantasies disturb you, no matter what they concern. Hold strongly to your resolution and keep a right intention toward God.
It is not an illusion that you are sometimes rapt in ecstasy and then quickly returned to the usual follies of your heart. For these are evils which you suffer rather than commit; and so long as they displease you and you struggle against them, it is a matter of merit and not a loss.
You must know that the old enemy tries by all means in his power to hinder your desire for good and to turn you from every devotional practice, especially from the veneration of the saints, from devout meditation on My passion, and from your firm purpose of advancing in virtue. He suggests many evil thoughts that he may cause you weariness and horror, and thus draw you away from prayer and holy reading. A humble confession displeases him and, if he could, he would make you omit Holy Communion. Do not believe him or heed him, even though he often sets traps to deceive you.
When he suggests evil, unclean things, accuse him. Say to him: “Away, unclean spirit! Shame, miserable creature! You are but filth to bring such things to my ears. Begone, most wretched seducer! You shall have no part in me, for Jesus will be my strength, and you shall be confounded. I would rather die and suffer all torments than consent to you. Be still! Be silent! Though you bring many troubles upon me I will have none of you. The Lord is my light, my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Though armies unite against me, my heart will not fear, for the Lord is my Helper, my Redeemer.”
Fight like a good soldier and if you sometimes fall through weakness, rise again with greater strength than before, trusting in My most abundant grace. But beware of vain complacency and pride. For many are led into error through these faults and sometimes fall into almost perpetual blindness. Let the fall of these, who proudly presume on self, be a warning to you and a constant incentive to humility.
Holy Love is Meek, and Faithful
Ah, Lord. Thank you.
I am ashamed now for what I have said to You.
Please forgive my pride. You know best and I consent to every silence that You offer in holy love for me. You know best.
I love you with all my heart, a heart not yet able to love fully with holy love, but trusting that in time You will carry me toward such a lofty goal by Your infinite grace. I desire it, and You know all things. Help me grow in holiness so that I might be able to ascend toward holy love with Your help.
AMEN.