Inaccessible Light
Anthony Esolen

I've been thinking some more about the story of Mother Teresa's dark night of the soul. It seems to me that the question at the heart of her experience is, "Who is God? What is His Name?"

"We know His holy Name," one of my brethren might respond. "It is I AM, that is, I AM the one of whom existence cannot be predicated in the same way as it is predicated of anything else, since God is His own existence, and is the cause of the existence of all things."

But we Christians also believe in the Trinity -- and therefore, to concentrate an insight from Pope Benedict, we must conclude that relationship too is a primary thing: that part of what it means essentially to be is to be for. To put it a different way, the name of God is what Saint John says: "God is Love," a Love that took flesh of the Virgin and dwelt among us.

The structure of love, then, is not what the pagans took it to be in Paul's day, and not what pagans take it to be now in our own. It is also not exactly what too many Christians take it to be. Granted, the soaring visions of Plato in the Phaedrus and the Symposium touch the unsuspected truth, here and there: Love is not merely desire for a good that you do not have, but also, more mysteriously, the outpouring of the soul, which entails a healing of that soul. Plato's myth assigns to Love the parentage of both Plenty and Poverty -- and he comes breathtakingly near the heart of the matter. the rest image