Abandonment Is the Sweet Fruit of Love
Article written by Fr. Bonaventure Sauer, OCD
In May 1897—that is, less than 6 months before her death—St. Thérèse wrote a poem bearing as its title the one I’ve attached to this article, “Abandonment Is the Sweet Fruit of Love.” Here are a couple stanzas from the beginning of this poem. They are a fertile earth for reflection.
Abandonment is the Sweet Fruit of Love
by St. Thérèse
There is on this earth
A marvelous Tree.
Its root, O mystery!
Is in Heaven…Love is the name
Of this ineffable Tree,
And its delectable fruit
Is called Abandonment.
Jesus didn’t often speak of trees, or least not big, grand trees, such as I grew up with. I suppose his having lived in Palestine had something to do with that. Whenever he wanted in his teaching to evoke the large and mysterious, something firm and immovable, it seems he spoke first of all of mountains.
On one occasion, though, while trying to invite us to a better understanding of the Kingdom of God present and at work among us, he famously spoke of the tiny mustard seed (“the smallest of all the seeds”) and the great tree (“the largest of all the plants”) born of it—a plant or tree large enough to invite “the birds of the sky” to come find sheltering shade beneath its branches (see Mk 4:30-32).
It is an image of momentous, even miraculous transformation, from something tiny, insignificant, and self-enclosed (the seed), to something large, expansive, undeniable, and opened to all (the tree). Wherever this transformation takes place, then, there the Kingdom of God is present and active among us.
We can apply this image to many realities of human life, be it regarding our hearts; our minds; our efforts and actions for the sake of the good, the real, the true; be it in our service and care for others. Whenever there is movement from tiny in intent, self-enclosed and self-centered or self-willed, from controlling and insistent toward becoming inviting and open, from exclusive to inclusive, from just me and others like me to the inclusion of all—there the Kingdom of God is present and at work.
Having begun with the image of a tree as Jesus used it to preach the gospel, let us now turn to a similar image as used St. Thérèse to open her poem. The tree, which she says is “on this earth,” nevertheless has its root “in Heaven.” Taken literally, and thinking of the earth as being below and heaven above, this way of describing the tree she has in mind might suggest it is somehow, strangely, an upside-down tree. But that would make the image unintentionally funny, or at least it would to me.
Instead, although its root is in Heaven, let’s think of the tree’s root, as one would expect of a tree, as being sunk deep in the earth, down to a depth that is hidden, fertile, and dark. It is there, then, that the tree, whose trunk and branches are on this earth, yet grounds itself in Heaven. It is there that it draws up to itself the divine and eternal, the holy, mysterious, and transcendent.
This tree, Thérèse says, is Love, with a capital “L.” What is this Love, considered here almost as a thing, although it is not a thing—a seeming paradox not unlike light or gravity or space or time, realities present everywhere that yet can’t be said to be in any one place?
If God is Love, as we declare Him to be in our faith, then the Love that St. Thérèse refers to here, the Love conjured up in her poem through the image of a tree with its root sunk deep in Heaven—this Love is all this and more. It is at once everywhere and nowhere. It is, like light or gravity, illuminating and uniting. It sets things in motion. It fosters growth and change. In such an ambiance, then, one both present and transcendent, our lives unfold fruitfully, its power embracing us, encompassing us, accompanying us.
It is interesting—when we think of God, we usually think in terms of some kind of divine person analogous to a human person. God is, of course, a person. Yet in actual fact—that is, if we seek to know the true and living God, not just the concept of God—God is three persons in an unbreakable communion of eternal love. Thus, I don’t relate to God person-to-person, in a way analogous to the way I relate to other human persons whose “selves” are present to me in and through their bodies.
We often, reflexively, make some such a maneuver with our minds whenever we try to think of God as present to us. We remove from the thought of Him the image of a physical body, rendering God present as a person, yet invisibly so.
Or, in the case of Jesus—of the risen Lord Jesus, of course—we imagine him as present while also embodied, however we might imagine that physical appearance. And we almost certainly do this with the Eucharist. We imagine the Eucharistic as Jesus present inside of, or perhaps behind, the physical presence of the host, making of the Real Presence something more like a Real Hiding.
Let me offer a different way of imagining the presence of God—in this case of the triune God. God as Trinity, as triune, is present to us in His invitation to join His communion. He comes to us as a threshold, which I can cross, if I choose to do so, stepping into that room where God is inviting me to dwell.
It’s as if I were standing in a doorway, and inside the room before me are three people talking with each other quietly, intimately, lovingly. Then they all look over at me standing there and say in one voice, “Ah, there you are, do come in.” It’s an imperfect image for how we relate to the triune God, but it’s an okay one. Indeed, it kind of works.
Of course, what is going on in this room between these three persons is an unbreakable communion of eternal Love, with a capital “L”—a Love that is never strained or needy, confined, cramped, offered only to the worthy and inherently lovable, parceling itself out tit for tat, and rather pretentiously thinking of itself as all-important and worthy only of other’s praise.
Rather, this divine Love arises out of the dignity it bestows on the Beloved by the very act of loving, making of him or her someone worthy of love because, well, love cannot help itself, it is a way of being. This divine Love creates equals, lifting up into a mutuality of relationship the one beloved. It is, therefore, endlessly patient and infinitesimally gracious. It is beauty and spirit and the light of truth itself.
So, let’s go back to St. Thérèse’s image for this divine Love, the image of a tree with its root sunk deep in Heaven. This tree grows and expands and spreads out and covers the earth. It is also fully “on this earth.”
As captured in the image of the mustard seed becoming the largest of plants, the Kingdom of God is characterized by precisely this movement of transformation. Love, like a tree rooted in Heaven—in the dwelling place of God’s eternal, triune communion of Love—is expansive, reaching out from itself towards others, towards potentially all others.
Of course, it is through such a movement in us that Love comes to take hold of us as a kind of divine “ambiance” in which we live and move and have our being. Thus, once taken hold of and encompassed by this Love—that is, once abandoned to this Love who is God—we go through life “gazing with unveiled faces on the glory of the Lord [and] being transformed into his same image, from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).
This spiritual dynamism at work in the manifestation of God’s Kingdom is everywhere the same, no matter what image we use to capture and express it. The grace of God reigning in our lives leads to greater and greater openness and other-centeredness in our souls. It is the polar opposite of all those movements of spirit that we can, through fear and sorrow and anger, be prone to and give way to—namely, self-centeredness and self-defensiveness, hardness of heart and aggression. But the Lord who is the Spirit leads us along the way of Love from glory to glory, helping us better know and receive and shine forth God’s eternal, triune communion of Love “on this earth.”
Article first published in the Apostolate of the Little Flower Vol. 86, No. 3
Fr. Bonaventure Sauer, O.C.D. entered the Discalced Carmelite Province of St. Thérèse in 1984 and was ordained in 1992. He’s held a number of responsibilities in the Province, including Provincial Delegate of the Secular Order, a position in which he’s gladly served since 2008. He presently lives in San Antonio, a city he loves, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, a site that he believes anyone would feel privileged to live and work.
