The Untroubled Waters of Divine Affection

41. He who loves God neither distresses nor is distressed with anyone on account of transitory things. There is only one kind of distress which he both suffers and inflicts on others: that salutary distress which the blessed Paul suffered and which he inflicted on the Corinthians (cf. 2 Cor. 7:8-11).

St. Maximus the Confessor Four Hundred Centuries on Love: #41

Take a trip back with me to an ancient, bustling marketplace where the heady combination of spice aromas and barter voices can be inhaled in the very air. Here, traders and travelers haggle over goods—silks, silver, and sundries—each item a temporary treasure, coveted today and forgotten tomorrow. In this buzzing mosaic of human endeavor, there's one soul untouched by the fervor of acquisition, a soul that threads through the stalls and stands with a serenity that seems out of place amongst all the noise.

This soul full of divine love regards the offerings of the world not to be sorrowed for in distress, but to be seen only as instruments in the larger symphony of life. He is like a vessel smoothly sailing over the ocean, untouched by the cresting waves of material loss or gain, for he knows that the transient trinkets of the earth are not the currency of the eternal.

But there is one form of distress which this soul takes—distress spoken of by Paul, a distress born out of deep concern of the spirit. It is quite a different storm: therefore, not a storm born of the desire for material goods, but one which rises out of the yearning for spiritual well-being for oneself and for others.

In this line of thought, the epistles to the Corinthians by Paul in their lines carried this storm, a typhoon that tore out the roots of self-satisfaction and sowed the seeds of self-contemplation. His words were not out of anger, but of love, longing for the receivers to feel the sting of their spiritual slumber and wake up to righteousness.

In that divine distress, both the sufferer and the inflictor are bound by a shared love—a love that spurns personal comfort in exchange for spiritual growth. It is a distress in the parent for a child to whom punishment is given, not for himself but from a deep motivation to witness his wise and righteous upbringing. It is the discomfort a doctor causes with a healing process, a transient unease against the enduring health it assures.

So one becomes a part of the harmony of a God lover, as a bringer and giver of this sanctifying discomfort. He does not relish the pain it may cause, nor does he shrink back from its imposition. For he realizes that, at times, the soul must pass through the purging fires of rebuke to come out the other end more refined, purer, and closer to the divine.

In our own walk with God, let us not be consumed by the temporal toils and troubles that so often distress the world. Rather, let us anchor ourselves in the quiet waters of divine affection, open to accept and share the salutary distress that unmasks the plenitude of the human that is already there in us and in the other.