Quinquagesima Sunday AD 2008 - God is Love and without Love I am nothing

Ave Maria!
Quinquagesima Sunday —3 February AD 2008
“If I have not charity, I am nothing.”[1]

The epistle this morning is arguably Saint Paul’s most beautiful piece of writing—inspired, both in the sense of conveying what God wished to say through him, and in the sense of a man speaking from the convictions found at the deepest part of his soul.

You may recall that last week the very same Saint Paul told us about all the troubles he endured in bringing Christ to the nations of the Mediterranean, and of the close relationship he had with Almighty God, “caught up,” as he was “to the third heaven ... to paradise ... hearing words that no man may repeat.”[3] That is to say that Saint Paul had a contemplative experience of God Himself—something like the vision of God we hope to experience in eternity, but very likely “scaled down” to the ability of mortal man to comprehend.

From another one of the Apostles, Saint John, who was particularly close to our Lord—and another one whose tumultuous life was made tolerable through divine contemplation—we have the simple maxim that “God is love.... God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him.”[4]

Today’s epistle is Saint Paul’s development of that theme. “God is love, and if I am without love, I am without God, and I am consequently nothing.” Saint Paul wrote in Greek and the word that he used for “love” was “αγαπη,” (agape) which we translate with the Latin “caritas.” This αγαπη” or “caritas” is a pure and disinterested love, such as a mother might have for a child—not the torrid, romantic love that we often find in movies and novels. The Latin “caritas” finds its way into our language as “charity”—but it means far more than just giving a few dollars to the poor now and then—it is the positive love of God, which will, in turn, cause us to love our fellow man, and perhaps then to give to those in need.

Saint Paul is emphatic—nothing else, beside the love of God, matters in the long-term view of things. Indeed, everything else either vanishes or changes as we pass into eternity. All of the knowledge on earth, all of the fasting and discipline and donations of a lifetime, even the ability to prophesy, and even faith “able to move mountains” will one day vanish. Paul doesn’t make note of it here, but even the faith and hope, which he says endure together with love, will be altered when we come face to face with God. Faith will be based on the actual experience of God and no longer on what He has told us in human language through the prophets and the Church. Hope will be fulfilled, for we will be in heaven and enjoy the vision of God, and there will be nothing more for which to hope, for we will then have everything.

Occasionally people will say that they have difficulty loving God for He seems so abstract to them. They can love their wife or their children, they can have genuine affection for the people next door, or at school, or on the job. They may even have a fondness for someone whom they have never met; one with whom they correspond by mail, or over the Internet, or the telephone. Their affection for the cat or the dog is real. But God seems to remain abstract to them—they do not realize how close they are to Him, and how much He does for them. It is the proverbial problem of “not seeing the forest for the trees”—we see the small details, but we fail to associate them together in the overall scheme of things. In many cases we have become so accustomed to the loving acts of God that we just take them for granted—as though they existed without any cause.

The most obvious bit of evidence is that we exist, together with the universe we see around us. All of the material things around us are perishable; we see many of them come and go. “Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty if we are strong.”[5] There is a similar fragility in all living creatures, and even in the inanimate objects we prize so highly. Today’s shiny red car will be some day’s rusty jalopy. That brand new dress will one day be the one in which you don’t want to be seen anymore. The fact that such unnecessary creatures as we are here is a demonstration of God’s love, without which we would be—literally—nothing.

We can think of creation as an outflowing or overflowing of God’s love. And, perhaps, the incredible scale of creation is another reason we take God’s love for granted—we have great difficulty in understanding how God can have a personal affection with so many creatures to worry about. But our Lord was quite adamant about the concern of God with His individual creatures. God knows how many hairs are on our heads:

Some will mistakenly think that God has lost interest. Many, many passages in the Gospels, like the one we read today, speak of Jesus healing the sick, and even resurrecting the dead. “Why,” they will ask, “does He not do the same for us today?” They fully miss the fact that God has done far better than the few healings reported in the Gospels. God created man with a rational soul, capable of knowing and loving God, but also capable of learning and organizing human affairs. Through this gift of God, man has learned to heal the sick in great numbers; to put food on a great many tables; to clothe and shelter a multitude far larger than any described in the Gospels. All of our modern achievements are gifts from God—from open-heart surgery to skyscraper and the symphony orchestra.

Still others complain that God’s world contains too much suffering, even for innocent people. They fail to realize that mankind brings a great deal of suffering on itself. They also fail to realize that God Himself entered human history and became one of us, taking our sins upon His own shoulders, as he prophesied in today’s Gospel—giving His life for our redemption in the Sacrifice of the Cross. God had a Son and a daughter without sin, but none of His children is without suffering.

Finally, we must recall that God not only created us, but that He created us “capable of Himself.” Saint Augustine tells us: “The mind is the image of God, in that it is capable of Him and can be partaker of Him.”[7] Mankind is unique among the animals of the earth. He is capable of abstract thought, capable of looking down into the depths of his own soul, capable of looking to the stars. If he looks hard enough, he finds God in both directions, inward and outward. Being made in the “image of God” is what makes us capable of knowing and loving. It is what enables us to love our spouses and our children, our friends and neighbors, and even our pets.

If we say that we have difficulty in knowing and loving God, perhaps it is because we have not been looking for Him. Perhaps this Lent will serve us as a time of deep introspection and even contemplation like that of Saint Paul or Saint John, who knew God in the midst of great difficulties in this world. This is the time to look out to the starry heavens and into the depths of our soul, so that we may embrace the love of God which waits for us there.

NOTES:

[1] Epistle: 1 Corinthians xiii: 1-13.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TheosAgape.jpg M. Disdero, From a stele on Mount Nebo. 19/02/2007 "ό θεòς αγάπη έστίν (ho theos agape estin).God is love." 1 John iv: 16.

[3] 2 Corinthians xi: 19-xii: 9.

[4] 1 John iv: 16.

[5] Psalm lxxxix: 10.

[6] Luke xii: 6-7; Matthew x: 29-31.

[7] Eo mens est imago Dei, quo capax Dei est et particeps esse potest. The mind is the image of God, in that it is capable of Him and can be partaker of Him. St. Augustine of Hippo De Trinitate, XIV:8