Deus Caritas Est

Today in the Gospel Jesus says to His disciples and to us, “As the Father has loved me so I also have loved you. Remain in my love.”

In 1Cor 1:13 St. Paul speaks of love, what it is and what it is not. He speaks also of the theological virtues. He says, “These three remain, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” He Says love is the more excellent way. He says in effect if I have all things good and have not love I have become as a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal signifying nothing. Love never fails.”

Jesus says, “I have told you this so my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete"

St. Therese of Lisieux, the little flower, lived only twenty four years and only nine of them in the monastery of the Carmel. She suffered terribly in the last eighteen months of her life from Tuberculosis. She wrote her autobiography, the Story of a Soul, on page154 she writes that she found her vocation in St. Paul’s 1Cor 1:13 that love is the most excellent and shortest way of going to God. She said, “I will be love.” She became what she wanted to be, a Saint and also what she never dreamed of becoming one of the three women doctor’s of the Church in its 2000 year history.

Last Christmas Pope Benedict issued his first encyclical letter titled in Latin “Deus Chritas Est”, “God is love.” It is 25 typed pages divided into two parts. The first is titled “The Unity of love in creation and in salvation history.” The second part is “The practice of love by the Church as a ‘Community of Love’”.

In the first part the Holy Father begins by saying that the word love is misunderstood and that the word love as applied to God is His reality, is His main attribute.

The Greeks used the words Eros and philia in describing their search for unity with the Divine. The latter Christians used the word agape which carries a different meaning.

The one God Yahweh revealed Himself to Abraham and formed a covenant of love. “You will be my people and I will be your God. Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky.” The Old Testament tells of the one true God being with His people throughout their history, His love for them. God’s love was constant, forgiving, faithful in spite of their backsliding. In the Song of Songs, The prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea the relationship is seen as personal and even conjugal. The Israelites committed adultery by worshiping other false gods. God’s love was intense and even jealous. “You shall have no other gods before me.”

The Greek word Eros was used to describe the love between a man and a woman. The word philia depicts friendship. The Greek Eros was involved with sex. Agape had not come into use. “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.”

Pope Benedict says in his introduction “In these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life, being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

“God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” St. Augustine said, “Love and do what you will.” And “At the Judgment we will be asked how much and how well did you love?” The first two commandments are: “You shall love God with your whole self” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

We must get the meaning of the word love clear. Love is God and God is love.

We go back to the words for love used by men: Eros; Philia; Agape; Chritas.

The meaning of the word love that stands out for us is the love between a man and a woman, a bodily and a spiritual love in the Christian’s sense. In Genesis are the words “Adam took Eve for his wife” and “She gave some to her husband to eat.”

“This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife and they become one body.”—This is physical, spiritual marriage between a man and woman and is a covenant of love, the love between man and woman in marriage. Eros becomes through a lifetime agape, formed thus by maturity, purification and suffering. The growth in this love Eros into Agape is a growth in the love of God and God’s love for them. “What God has joined let not any man put asunder.”

God’s love for his human bodily creature is made clear in the coming of God as man. Jesus says, “This is my commandment; love one another as I love you.” How does God love us? No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friend’s. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” Philia, friends; Eros, human love between a man and a woman in marriage and agape, the Christian word that encompasses love in all its forms when brought to its fullness in God.

Love rightly understood and rightly lived is the way to infinity and eternal life, to extacy.It is the more excellent way. God is love, it is in him we live and move and have our being..

And finally we should point to the love between the three members of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit is the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father.

God’s love is familial and His love is for His people for whom the Son died. Love is the Christian virtue in its four forms that lead to life. Love is not love if its source and goal is not God. In the vocation of matrimony, Eros is transformed into Agape over time. The purification and suffering that takes place is part of renunciation. Renouncing of the love of self for the sake of the beloved, spouse and offspring.

The God who is love shows that love on the cross in a complete and perfect act of renunciation that leads to the resurrection, infinity and eternal life.

As Eve was brought forth from Adam’s side so was the bride, the Church brought forth from the wound in Christ’s side, as He slept in death. The bridegroom giving up Himself for the sake of His beloved, so she could live, could become holy.

Mankind cannot realize the truth of His being without love, not that which the world calls love but the true love of God.

He says, you have not chosen me but I Have chosen you. We either love or we die. But counterfeit love will not suffice.

The Cross of Christ is the symbol and the reality of God’s love, that love that surpasses all others, And all understanding the more excellent way entails pain and suffering, renunciation of self but they are for a purpose. So that we who love as God loves may bring forth much fruit unto eternal life.

The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel cannot be set aside, however, “If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love.”