A treasure trove----look at this on spiritual friendship

The Society of Canadian Catholic Bloggers a treasure trove of blog posts and this morning, in between filing my HST/GST taxes and preparing to write several stories, I came across this gem on Holy Friendship at The Christian State in Life:

United in Christ: Bl. Jordan of Saxony & Bl. Diana d’Andalo
By: Madeleine Gubbels

“You are so deeply engraven on my heart that the more I realize how truly you love me from the depths of your soul, the more incapable I am of forgetting you and the more constantly you are in my thoughts; for your love of me moves me profoundly, and makes my love for you burn more strongly.”

You will probably be surprised to learn that those words were written to a Dominican nun from a Dominican priest in the thirteenth century. You may be even more surprised to learn that their relationship was nothing like that of Abelard and Heloise or of Martin Luther and Katherine von Bora. Indeed, the love between Bl. Jordan of Saxony and Bl. Diana d’Andalo burned ever passionately but ever chastely from the day they met until the day they died—and beyond! As Jordan wrote to her again:

“…Why are you thus anguished? Am I not yours, am I not with you: yours in labour, yours in rest; yours when I am with you, yours when I am far away; yours in prayer, yours in merit, yours too, as I hope, in the eternal reward? …were I to die you would not be losing me; you would be sending me before you to [heaven], that I abiding there might pray for you to the Father and so be of much greater use to you there, living with the Lord, than here in this world where I die all the day long.”

What an unusual pair of lovers! It is not often that the Church has seen a celibate couple bound to each other with such strength of love, though Francis and Claire of Assisi, and Jane de Chantal and Francis de Sales, spring to mind. Their relationship challenges us: how can a love between a man and a woman be so intense yet so disinterested, so detached?