The Wound Love Refuses to Close

Christ’s Omni-Vulnerability and the Terrible Beauty of Loving as He Loves

“He voluntarily surrendered Himself to His Passion because He was already possessed by the passion of His great love, which is stronger than death.”

— Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, The Dawn of the Eternal

There are truths about Christ that console us, and there are truths about Christ that undo us.

We are consoled to hear that God loves us. We are consoled to hear that He seeks the lost, forgives the sinner, heals the brokenhearted, and receives the prodigal. We have heard these things so often that they can become almost gentle abstractions, truths that warm the heart without necessarily overturning it.

But then occasionally a word opens before us and we see what the love of God actually looks like.

And we tremble.

Archimandrite Zacharias writes that Christ “did not save us with His omnipotence but with His humble love, making Himself vulnerable for us ‘unto death.’” The words should be earth-shattering. The Almighty saves by becoming vulnerable. Omnipotence does not crush the rebellion of creation; Love exposes Himself to its rejection.

God permits Himself to be wounded by those whom He has come to save.

Here we encounter something almost unbearable about the revelation of Christ. His vulnerability is not accidental to His mission. It is not simply something imposed upon Him by Judas, Pilate, the soldiers, or the crowd. He gives Himself over to it. Before the nails pierce His hands, love has already opened His Heart.

Zacharou says something extraordinary: Christ surrendered Himself to His Passion because He was already possessed by another passion—the passion of His love for us.

The Cross therefore begins long before Golgotha.

It begins within the Heart of God.

The Zeal of His House

“Zeal for thy house will consume me.”

And what is this house?

“We are his house.”

The zeal consuming Christ is therefore His desire for us.

This is where the language of St. Isaac the Syrian becomes so luminous. Isaac speaks of divine love with a boldness that sometimes makes cautious religious language seem almost bloodless. Creation itself exists because of the overflowing goodness of God. The Incarnation reveals not a reluctant God persuaded to have mercy upon fallen creatures, but the depths of a love that has pursued humanity from the beginning.

We desire God because we have first been desired by Him.

We seek because we have been sought.

We love because we have first been loved.

And when the soul begins to perceive this—not simply intellectually, but existentially—wonder is born.

For Isaac, wonder is not religious sentimentality. It is what happens when the heart suddenly glimpses the disproportion between what God is and what God has done for us.

The Infinite has desired the finite.

The Holy One has embraced sinners.

The Immortal One has entered death.

The One whom the heavens cannot contain allowed Himself to be contained within a womb, wrapped in swaddling clothes, held in human arms—and finally stretched upon wood.

Why?

Because “the zeal of His house” consumed Him.

Because His house was us.

Because He would rather enter our death than abandon us to it.

This is divine eros stripped of every sentimental distortion: the terrible, beautiful desire of God to possess the human heart by giving Himself entirely to it.

The Omni-Vulnerability of God

Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered how vulnerable Christ allowed Himself to become.

He could be misunderstood.

He could be abandoned.

He could be betrayed by a kiss.

He could watch disciples leave Him because His words were too difficult.

He could weep over Jerusalem knowing Jerusalem would reject Him.

He could love Judas while Judas was already calculating the price of betrayal.

He could restore Peter knowing Peter would deny ever having known Him.

He could heal ten lepers and watch nine disappear.

He could give Himself completely and receive almost nothing in return.

This is the omni-vulnerability of Christ.

And perhaps nowhere is it more visible than in the strange helplessness of divine love before human freedom.

God can raise Lazarus from the tomb, calm the sea, multiply bread, cast out demons and forgive sins.

But He will not compel love.

Before the human heart, Omnipotence waits.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

He does not break down the door.

This vulnerability reaches its fullest revelation upon the Cross. Christ takes upon Himself the human tragedy “as if He Himself were guilty.” He stands where Adam stands. He enters the exile. He bears the curse. He allows the consequences of our estrangement from God to inscribe themselves upon His own flesh.

The wounds remain.

This is astonishing.

The Resurrection does not erase them.

The glorified Christ still bears the wounds of love.

Perhaps because love does not regret having loved.

And Then We Begin to Tremble

It is possible to contemplate all of this with immense gratitude.

Until we hear Christ say:

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Then gratitude becomes trembling.

For suddenly the Cross ceases to be only the place where Christ loves us.

It becomes the revelation of what love itself is.

And this is where Christianity becomes frightening.

We are called to carry something of this same love within ourselves.

Not Christ’s redemptive suffering, which belongs uniquely to Him, but His manner of loving: freely, vulnerably, without calculating whether love will be returned.

And almost everything within us resists this.

We want love to be reciprocal.

We want generosity to be remembered.

We want sacrifice to bear visible fruit.

We want fidelity to be met with fidelity.

We want those for whom we have poured ourselves out at least to recognize what was given.

There is nothing strange about this. The heart longs for communion.

But Christ reveals a love capable of remaining love even when communion is refused.

That is much harder.

The Love That Can Be Rejected

Perhaps this is one of the deepest sorrows a human being can know: not simply losing someone we love, but seeing love itself rejected.

A person may spend years building something beautiful for others.

He may give counsel, encouragement, protection, time, strength, forgiveness. His presence may become shelter for countless people. His words may bind wounds he himself carries silently.

And still he may receive little tenderness in return.

He may even be misunderstood by those for whom he has sacrificed most.

There is a particular sorrow here that death itself does not explain.

It is the sorrow of unreturned love.

And strangely, this may bring us very near to Christ.

For the deepest wound of Golgotha is not physical pain. It is rejected communion.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often would I have gathered thy children together.”

I would have gathered you.

There is the wound.

Not merely: You have sinned against Me.

But:

I wanted you.

And you would not come.

The Desert Knows This Love

The Desert Fathers understood that Christian perfection could never be reduced to ascetical accomplishment. Fasting, vigils, silence, poverty, solitude—none of these possesses meaning apart from the transformation of the heart.

The goal was to acquire the heart of Christ.

Abba Agathon could say that he would gladly exchange his own healthy body for that of a leper if he could thereby relieve the other’s suffering.

To modern ears this sounds excessive.

It is excessive.

Love is excessive.

Saint Silouan understood this when the grace of God expanded his heart until he could no longer pray merely for himself. He wept for Adam. He wept for humanity. He prayed for those who did not know God. Eventually the suffering of the world became something he carried within his own heart.

Saint Sophrony would describe something similar: the person united to Christ begins to bear Adam within himself.

And Archimandrite Zacharias speaks of prayer for the world as a shedding of blood.

These are not unrelated teachings.

They describe what happens when Christ begins to share His own Heart with a human being.

The Ocean of Human Misfortune

And this is why genuine spiritual life eventually becomes costly.

At first we imagine that drawing closer to God will protect us from suffering.

Eventually we discover that drawing closer to God makes the heart capable of suffering more deeply.

Not because God makes us morbid.

Because He makes us capable of communion.

The Holy Spirit enlarges the heart.

And an enlarged heart has more room for sorrow.

The suffering of another is no longer entirely “another’s.” Their loneliness enters us. Their rejection enters us. Their illness enters us. Their death enters us. Even their refusal of our love enters us.

Saint Silouan called this bearing the whole Adam.

It is magnificent when written in a book.

It can be devastating when lived.

For the closer we draw to Christ, the less possible it becomes to protect ourselves by indifference.

The Temptation to Close the Heart

And so there comes a temptation familiar to anyone who has loved deeply.

Close the heart.

Become prudent.

Expect less.

Give less.

Do not expose yourself again.

Do not allow another person’s suffering to become your suffering.

Do not love where love may be refused.

There is a worldly wisdom in this.

And sometimes genuine boundaries and distance are necessary. Christian vulnerability is not passivity before manipulation or abuse. Christ Himself withdrew, remained silent, and refused certain demands.

But something more subtle can happen.

We can begin protecting ourselves not merely from harm but from love.

The heart can gradually become defended.

And a defended heart may suffer less.

But it also wonders less.

Desires less.

Prays less.

And eventually loves less.

The Desert Fathers feared this hardening far more than they feared suffering.

Desire and Wonder

Here St. Isaac becomes our companion again.

For Isaac, the Christian life is not fundamentally the construction of spiritual defenses. It is the enlargement of desire.

The heart begins to perceive how desperately God desires His creation, and something of that divine desire is born within us.

Then wonder follows.

We begin to look at another human being differently.

Not according to usefulness.

Not according to reciprocity.

Not according to whether they understand us.

But according to the mystery that this person is desired by God.

And suddenly the most difficult person becomes astonishing.

Christ desires this person.

Christ died for this person.

Christ longs for this person.

And if Christ dwells within me, then somehow His longing begins to become mine.

This is why the saints can love in ways that seem almost incomprehensible.

They have not become less human.

They have become terrifyingly human.

Their hearts have become undefended before God.

The Wounds Remain

Perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions of spiritual maturity is that eventually nothing hurts us.

Christ reveals the opposite.

Perfect love is perfectly vulnerable.

After the Resurrection He does not appear to Thomas without wounds.

“Put your finger here.”

The wounds have become glory.

This does not mean that every wound we receive is holy. Some wounds arise from our passions, our expectations, our possessiveness, our need to be affirmed.

Those must be healed.

But other wounds come simply because we have loved.

And perhaps these should not always be closed.

They may become openings.

Places through which compassion enters.

Places through which prayer enters.

Places through which the suffering of another enters.

Places through which Christ enters.

To Love Without Regret

There comes a moment when the Christian must make a profound interior decision.

Will I regret having loved because love was not returned?

Will I regret generosity because it was forgotten?

Will I regret fidelity because another walked away?

Will I regret having opened my heart because someone wounded it?

Christ answers from the Cross.

No.

Love does not regret loving.

This may be one of the hardest forms of poverty.

To have given something that cannot be recovered and to refuse to call the gift a mistake.

To have loved someone who could not receive that love and still bless them.

To have built something that others may neglect and still thank God that it was built.

To have poured oneself out and leave the accounting to God.

This is not emotional indifference.

It is crucified freedom.

“It Is Finished”

Zacharou writes that only when the zeal of His house had consumed Him did Christ enter His rest.

There is something breathtaking here.

Christ rests only after He has given everything.

Nothing remains withheld.

His teaching has been given.

His Body has been given.

His Mother has been given.

His forgiveness has been given.

His Blood has been given.

His Spirit will be given.

And finally:

“It is finished.”

Love has exhausted itself.

And therefore Love cannot be accused of having withheld anything.

Perhaps this is what the Christian heart secretly desires as well.

Not success.

Not recognition.

Not even necessarily to see the fruit of what has been given.

But someday to stand before Christ emptied.

To discover that whatever small measure of love was entrusted to us was not buried out of fear.

That we allowed ourselves to love.

That we allowed ourselves to care.

That we allowed another’s suffering to disturb our peace.

That we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable.

That we did not permit disappointment to make us cynical.

That the wounds did not persuade us to close the heart.

And perhaps then we will understand something we could never understand here:

none of the love was wasted.

Every hidden sacrifice.

Every unanswered kindness.

Every prayer offered in the night.

Every tear no one saw.

Every fidelity misunderstood.

Every grief carried silently.

Every person held before God when nothing else could be done.

All of it entered the mystery of Christ’s own self-offering.

For the final revelation of the Cross is not simply that God suffered.

It is that God loved without protecting Himself from the consequences of love.

And if we ask Him to give us His Heart, we should tremble before what we are asking.

For He may answer.

He may enlarge the heart.

He may allow us to taste something of His desire for humanity.

He may lead us toward that ocean of human misfortune.

He may teach us to pray until prayer itself begins to feel like the shedding of blood.

And He may leave within us wounds that love refuses to close.

Not because He desires our destruction.

But because there are wounds that become doors into communion.

There are sorrows that enlarge the heart.

There are losses through which we finally discover what love has always been.

And there is a vulnerability which, when united to Christ, is no longer weakness at all.

“For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God.”

Perhaps this is the great paradox at the center of the Christian life:

We spend much of our lives asking God to make us strong.

And God gives us the wounded Heart of Christ.

Only slowly do we discover that this is His strength.

And perhaps only then do we understand why the saints weep.

They have seen too much of Love to remain invulnerable.