The Bridegroom's Plea

"Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her Beloved?" (SoS. 8:5)

Decades ago, reading Father Jean D'Elbee's "I Believe in Love," I was stopped cold by two words.  Two simple words.  The story went that St. Margaret Mary, when asked by Jesus to promulgate the vision He gave her of His tender heart, became immediately overwhelmed at the prospect of such an endeavor. Europe was rife with the rigidity of Jansenism and sorely needed His message, but she was a simple nun in a convent.  With great warmth came the plea, "Let Me."

What an arrow to my heart--of exquisite relief!  The over-responsibility that so often propelled me, just under my own radar yet ever ready to spring into action, suddenly evaporated.  My entire being relaxed in an eternal sort of way.  Can this be real?! The burden not on me?? What? Lights went off. "The peace that passeth understanding."  Instant de-mobilization of all my ever sizzling "I'm-on" reflexes. Jesus is my all.  The military command--faint, and shot through with gentleness..."At ease."  Am I blessedly allowed to be "at ease?" Astonishing!

My Bridegroom's gentle "Let Me" still stops me in my tracks. Its effect never diminishes.  I have pondered why my being soaks in those words at such at such a continuously, profoundly healing level.  Of course, I can point to my family of origin--I am the oldest of eleven children and took on "responsible" as my middle name; my pre-Vatican II formation--try very hard and you may merit God's love.  And these, overarched by the music of the 50's culture--meeting expectations the name of the game! Yet I sense something deeper here, a "cosmic" dimension...something beyond my immediate moment-in-time. While all of the above factors are true, in a sense they are players on a stage, driven by roots more primal than immediate family, church, or culture. Why the sense of "eternal relaxation?"

The Genesis story tells our story.  The serpent's "Did God really...??" to Eve turned her trust to suspicion--God's generosity tainted by withholding.  Now she'd have to grasp.  Her feminine gift of receptivity had been dealt a frontal attack.  To compound matters, her bridegroom-protector Adam, by her side as the Tempter slithered in, was asleep at the wheel.  She was isolated, vulnerable.  Since God was untrustworthy, her holy delight in Him shifted into distorted "longing" (Gen.3:16) for her husband, now preoccupied with thorny, thistly efforts for security (Gen.3:18)--and unavailable. She stepped into places never meant for her. Over-responsibility became her middle name.  Self-reliance in all its forms--controlling, managing, over-orchestrating, with their antennae of anxiety and spinning brain--felt more comfortable than the fear of annihilation (I disappear if I'm not busy accommodating) which drove those behaviors.  No relaxing for Eve.

And no relaxing for Eve's offspring.  Enter the new Adam, the new Bridegroom, who spoke through St. Margaret Mary to all of us, the original French far more moving  than the English, "Mon divin Coeur est si passionne d'amour pour les hommes et pour toi en particulier"-- "my divine Heart burns with love for all mankind, but for you in particular."  That Heart aches for each "bride," male or female, from the beginning of time to the end, in every circumstance, to "Let Me."  Let Me bear your burdens, let Me anguish with your heartache, let Me compensate for your inadequacies, let Me love you in your foibles, let Me swallow the damage you've done others in My mercy.  Let me bear everything you cannot bear.  Let me trust in you.  Let me love in you.  Let me substitute for you, let me be your "enough."  Let Me.  Let Me.

Yet Eve goes so deep in our souls that even the "letting" of such a Bridegroom bumps up against the fall in us. Mary, our new Eve, help us!  Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, who give us such a profound understanding of St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body, explains, "To say that 'Mary is younger than sin means that she 'belongs to the original state of human existence"...revealing...what a human person is in God's plan of creation."  Mary "let Him" at every turn! Yet our dear St. John Paul the Great assures us that "If there had been no original sin, human sanctity would have been formed differently; and, indeed, in Mary, who was without it, it did in fact come about differently...(and) this does not mean more easily...the gospel gives us clear evidence of this, describing difficulties that were peculiar to Mary's holiness and were comparable only to those of Christ himself." One spiritual writer speaks of Mary's virginity as Mary's perfect availability. Such purity allowed her to feel the struggle of all humanity, and her own, most exquisitely.  Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, affirms, "She was exempt from sin, but not from struggle and from what Saint John Paull II called 'the tiredness of believing...the particular heaviness of heart linked with a sort of night of faith.  If Jesus in Gethsemane had to struggle and sweat blood to get his human will to adhere fully to the Father's will, is it surprising that His Mother had to face agony too?"  Archbishop Fulton Sheen tells us that the new Eve was engaged in a "battle...of cosmic proportions.  No woman ever fought so much to master the flesh." But in Mary's "seven sorrows" and so many more, she never crossed the line to grasping. Fiat.  She was completely open to the New Adam's burning, yearning ache to "Let Me."

Dear Mother, infuse in me richly the eternal relief of your Son's "Let Me."  May I recognize more deeply with each breath that the opposite of faith is not doubt but control. You are the dispenser of all grace.  May I be "bride" in your "New Eve." May my "holy relaxation" pulse backwards and forwards the generations, joining yours, hastening the Wedding Feast at which our Bridegroom's plea is fully realized.  Then shall we marvel at what we behold, exulting with one voice,

"Who is this coming up from the desert, leaning on her Beloved?" (Song of Songs 8:5)

Bonnie West, Copyright 2025