Pazzo d'amore

by Sr. Mary Magdalene, OP
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I remember reading a book on Blessed Charles de Foucauld which had excerpts translated from the French language throughout. Occasionally, however, the author deliberately left words in French because he felt that their meaning was a bit weightier than if he had tried to find an equivalent word in English. Upon initial reading, I found myself stumbling over the sudden appearance of a French word set off in italics. But upon reading the footnote descriptor of its approximate meaning I came to appreciate that it took nearly a sentence or two to even attempt to flesh out what that little word in italics embodied in itself.

More recently, another author, in referring to the writings of St. Catherine of Sienna, left a phrase in its original Italian. Immediately I thought of my earlier experience and sensed that the phrase held more treasure than a simple translation to English might convey.
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So here I am turning the phrase Pazzo d’amore* over in my mind and my heart in an effort to reveal just a small portion of what St. Catherine might be trying to share.

St. Catherine experienced the Lord as a mad lover. One who could only love deeply, authentically, and unreservedly, despite the apparent un-loveliness of the object of His love. He loves the lost sheep so much that he would leave the 99 despite the poor economics of it all. Crazy. He loves his persecutors, begging His Father to “forgive them for they know not what they are doing.” Crazy. He loves the lost, the sinners, those who deny Him, in the historical persons such as the Prodigal, the woman caught in adultery, his close friend Peter. Crazy. His heart, pazzo d’amore and outside of time and space, reaches through the ages to you and I; today’s lost, sinners who often find ourselves denying His love and grace in our lives. The crazy thing is that His abundant and unrestrained love for each of us is not dependent at all on our responsiveness to that love. It is offered completely, from the Cross and from the altar, all day and every day. In our feeble attempt to know and love the Lord better, we open our hearts to a grace that infuses a small but incremental understanding of His own heart. In this, we can begin to embrace His call to “love the Lord our God with all your heart, and with all your soul and all your mind…..love your neighbor as yourself” (Gospel of Matthew)

Pazzo d’amore, the Incarnation
Pazzo d’amore, the Teacher
Pazzo d’amore, the Healer
Pazzo d’amore, in His Mercy
Pazzo d’amore, in His Passion
Pazzo d’amore, in His Holy Spirit
Pazzo d’amore, in the Eucharist
Crazy with love!

*Pazzo d’amore: for St. Catherine of Sienna, related to the outlandish, apparently nonsensical, unbridled “crazy with love” that the Lord suffers for us, his simple and unworthy creatures.