The Way of Vulnerability

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Love is disinterested if it is interested in the being, which is to say the deification, of the other person. 'Let me stay outside, let me be a stone trampled under your feet, my name soon effaced, like the humblest memorials in the Middle Ages, while you go into the banqueting hall!' Where there is prayer like this, disinterested love is present.

Make no mistake, setting out on this path means becoming vulnerable to all the pain of the world. If we did not know that Christ had shed his blood on the cross and uttered his cry of unimaginable despair, we should be crushed beyond recall. Everyone who relinquishes the security of a sleepwalking existence is sooner or later mortally wounded by the world's suffering. But because God became man and took this suffering on himself, the way of vulnerability and death becomes for us resurrection. And we can pray and fight for universal salvation: 'My son, I give you this commandment: let mercy always prevail in your balance, till the moment when you feel within yourself the mercy that God shows towards the world' (St Isaac the Syrian, sentence 48).


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