I am not really familiar with the spirituality of the Divine Will. However let me describe it, in my own terms as follows. Do you remember as a very,very mall child how your mother used to hold your hand all the time in the wide world as you walked? I do. All I wanted was the comfort of holding my mother's hand all the time But then as I got a little older all I wanted to do was race about, look around getting out of reach of her hand. My mother knew it was time to let go and and so I ran. But spiritual marriage is like this; it is realising that holding on to our mother's hand all the time was always the best place to be. So be agreement we hold hands for all Eternity. We never let go of each other. T S Elliot describes this so well when he speaks in his poem , 'The Wasteland' as having come back to where we started and knowing it for the first time. Hosea 11:3-4 God: “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I who took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.”
St Columbanus describes spiritual marriage very well when he describes it as being like the little fishing vessel that comes back home to port at end of day.
Yes Padraig. TSEliot caught it. I like St Catherine of Siena's story of her asking Jesus " I have received you in Holy Communion but here you are on the altar too. How can that be? And He told her: you are the fish and I am the Sea. I am in you and you are in Me. I wonder if that is what it is like. When I go to adoration I often say it to the Lord. "I am the fish and You are the Sea. I am in You and You are in me So simple yet profoundly deep.
Jesus To Luisa Jesus described living in His Will as a drop of water (us) in the ocean (God) - the drop never leaves the water but seems to disappear.
In spiritual marriage heaven begins on Earth. But here below all the saints and heaven envy us this, that while sharing heaven we are prepared and begin to bear the Cross with its full force As st Jose Maria describes it, a day without the Cross is a day without Christ. But what joy!! To bear His Cross; oh what joy!! Already heaven. What joy, for poor, poor sinners, what joy!!! To walk with Christ to Calvary, laughing, They said of Padre Pio that he was the happiest man on Earth. He who bore the Cross the most , How true.
One of the things about the prayer journey is, |I think that we underestimate constantly God's Love and ..I don't know how to put this better , but well His Hunger for us. As the cathechism taught us we were made to, 'Know love and serve him '. We are His children. He does not want 10% or 25% or 90% of us, He wants He demands us all. But at each stage of the journey I used to think I had given all I needed to give. So if we say one rosary a day to rest on our laurels and to understand that God wants our entire day , our entire lives to be a rosary. Our spiritual life then if it is healthy should be of an ever increasing hunger for God. Of prayer growing deeper and deeper, day by day in our lives.
766 Abandonment to the will of God is the secret of happiness on earth. Say, then: meus cibus est, ut faciam voluntatem ejus, my food is to do his will. From "The Way" by Josemaria Escriva'
