The letter proposed an interesting itinerary that includes these three verbs: SEARCH, INHABIT AND FORMATE.

In this reflection, I will only take the first verb: “SEARCH”, starting with the following question: “Have you seen the one my heart loves?” (Song of Songs 3,3).

I want to begin with a wake-up call made by our Lord Jesus Christ in the person of angel of Ephesus, (Rev. 2, 1-7) the claim that He makes of having abandoned the love we had in the beginning. It seems that this is one of the main causes of the crisis that religious life is going through today.

This is what attracts attention in the Song of Songs. An incessant search of the Beloved to find the Love of her soul.

The love of the Song of Songs is struggle and fatigue, just like death (Song of Songs 8,6). The search shares fatigue, it asks to get up and get on track, it asks to assume the darkness of the “night.” The night is “absence”, separation or estrangement from the One that the heart loves. The wife, the main protagonist of the drama, looks for the Beloved, but He is absent, it is necessary to look for him, going out to the streets and squares. “Have you seen the one my heart loves?” It is the question shouted in the heart of the night, which arouses the joy of the Beloved’s memory and it opens the wound of an unbearable remoteness.

Love defies the night and its dangers, it is greater than all fear: “there is no fear in love, on the contrary, perfect love discards fear.

The Incarnation is the presence of love.

How to keep this flame of first love alive? What experiences of encounter impel me to seek Jesus and respond to his love?

By Sr. Alba Castellanos.