Love for Christ is Insatiable

Seeking Christ is the highest of goals in our Orthodox faith. There is nothing higher. Elder Porphyrios says, “He is the summit of desire.” What does this mean? Simply that there is no other desire that can compare to this. There is no greater joy than this loving relationship with Christ. It brings joy with no limits. He says the love for Christ is “without end, without satiety.”

When we think of love in our worldly relationships, we know that it peaks and ebbs. Many are afraid to give their love for fear that it may be taken away later. Many have experienced intense disappointment in their lives because of a broken relationship that started with passionate love. On a human scale love comes and goes. Who we love today may be different than who we love tomorrow. But divine love is different. It has no end. It “continually grows and deepens,” the Elder tells us. Worldly love, however, can end in despair. When we lose a lover it hurts and we suffer. But “divine eros raises us up to the sphere of God it bestows serenity, joy and fullness.”  This kind of pleasure and joy that comes from the divine is the kind we can never have enough of. It is something we never tire of.

With love of God, we eagerly engage in fasts, we desire to pray, and we make prostrations as expression of our love. Yet, we are never satisfied. The more we experience the love of Christ, the more we desire to be with Him.

Saint Augustine writes about this in his Soliloquies, 

“I love You, Lord my God, and I desire to love you ever more intensely. For You are truly sweeter than any honey, more wholesome than any milk and brighter than any light; for me You are infinitely more precious than gold or silver or precious stones… O love that is ever boiling over and never cooled! Consume me with your heat! I shall love You, Lord, because You first loved me. And where shall I find words sufficient to describe all the signs of Your greatest love for me?… You flooded me with the light of Your countenance and set Your glory as a sign above the door of my heart…” (Chap 19) 

Elder Porphyrios says the Way of Love requires an Orthodox spirit which is a giving of your heart totally to God. 

The more you give yourself to the love of Christ, the more you want to give yourself. We must love Him with all our soul, heart, strength, power and mind. We must plug our heart into His love and be united with Him. 

As we pursue the Way of Love we come to a point where we are united with Christ. It is at this point that satiety ceases. This is called theosis. We find ourselves in union with God and bathed in His light. We know then that nothing will ever again separate us.

Reference: Wounded By Love, pp 160 - 162